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THE 



MAKING OF ENGLAND 




BY 



JOHN RICHARD GREEN, M.A., LL.D. 
u 

HONORARY FELLOW OF JESUS COLLEGE, OXFORD 

AUTHOR OF "HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE" " SHORT HISTORY OF THE 

ENGLISH PEOPLE" ETC. 



tBitf) Jttaps 



NEW YORK 

HARPER & BROTHERS, FRANKLIN SQUARE 

1882 



ID A » 52 

.Gr? 



Bj Trtvasftr 
JUN £ 1*1/ 



PREFACE. 



The present work is only a partial realization of 
an old-standing project of mine, for it is now some 
ten or twelve years since I made collections for, and 
actually began, a history of England up to the Nor- 
man Conquest. This work, however, was interrupt- 
ed by the preparation of my Short History, and has 
since been further delayed by my revision and ex- 
pansion of that work ; and, now that my hands are 
free, the state of my health forbids my carrying out 
this earlier plan in its full extent. I have thought 
it better, therefore, to gather up. and complete what 
I could of the history of the earlier times up to the 
union of England under Ecgberht; and this the 
more because these years form a distinct period in 
our national history whose interest and importance 
have, I think, still to be fully recognized. They form, 
in fact, the period of the Making of England — the 
age during which our fathers conquered and settled 
over the soil of Britain, and in which their political 
and social life took the form which it still retains. 
The centuries of administrative organization which 



v i PREFACE. 

stretch from Ecgberht to Edward the First, the age 
of full national development which extends from Ed- 
ward's day to our own, only become fully intelligible 
to us when we have fully grasped this age of nation- 
al formation. I cannot but feel, therefore, that it is 
no slight misfortune that such a period should re- 
main comparatively unknown ; and that its strug- 
gles, which were in reality the birth-throes of our na- 
tional life, should be still to most Englishmen, as 
they were to Milton, mere battles of kites and of 
crows. Whether I have succeeded in setting these 
struggles in a truer and a more interesting light, my 
readers must decide. The remoteness of the events, 
the comparative paucity of historical materials, no 
doubt make such an undertaking at the best a haz- 
ardous one ; and one of the wisest of my friends, 
who is, at the same time, the greatest living authority 
on our early history, warned me at the outset against 
the attempt to construct a living portraiture of times 
which so many previous historians, themselves men 
of learning and ability, had left dead. Perhaps it is 
my own vivid interest in the subject which has en- 
couraged me, in spite of such a warning, to attempt 
to convey its interest to others. In doing so, how- 
ever, I have largely availed myself of some resources 
which have been hitherto, I think, unduly neglected. 
Archaeological researches on the sites of villas and 
towns, or along the line of road or dyke, often fur- 
nish us with evidence even more trustworthy than 
that of written chronicle; while the ground itself, 



PREFACE. 



Vll 



where we can read the information it affords, is, 
whether in the history of the Conquest or of the Set- 
tlement of Britain, the fullest and the most certain 
of documents. Physical geography has still its part 
to play in the written record of that human history 
to which it gives so much of its shape and form ; and 
in the present work I have striven, however imper- 
fectly, to avail myself of its aid. 

I may add, in explanation of the reappearance of 
a few passages, relating principally to ecclesiastical 
matters, which my readers may have seen before, 
that where I had little or nothing to add or to 
change I have preferred to insert a passage from 
previous work, with the requisite corrections and 
references, to the affectation of rewriting such a pas- 
sage for the mere sake of giving it an air of novelty. 

John Richard Green. 



CONTENTS. 



INTRODUCTION. 

BRITAIN AND ITS FOES. 
A.D. • PAGE 

Britain Fortunate in .the Moment of its Conquest 1,2 

Rapidity of its Organization and Development 2, 3 

Shown in its Roads and its Towns 3, 4 

But this Civilization of Little Depth 5 

Britain indeed little more than a Military Colony 6 

Its Civilization Hindered by the Physical Character of the Country . 7, 8 

Its Downs ... . . 9 

Its Waste and Fen ,,,,....... 10 

Its Woodlands , , , , ■ . 1 1 

Effect of this on the Provincials .12 

Probable Severances between the Romanized and Un-Romanized Pro- 
vincials . . . . . . . . " . . • 13 

This Heightened by Misgovernment and Disaffection .... 14 

The Severance perhaps Accounts for the Success of the Pictish Inroads 14, 15 
While Picts Attack by Land, Scots and Saxons Attack by Sea . . 15 

The Pirate-boats of the Saxons 16 

Letter of Sidonius Describing their Piracy 16,17 

, Their Work mainly Slave-hunting . . . . . . .17 

Effect of their Presence in the Channel . ... . . , ... 18,19 

Creation of the Saxon Shore 19, 20 

Fortresses of the Saxon Shore . 20 

The Roman Troops Strong Enough to Guard Britain to the Last . . 21 

Withdrawal of "the Roman Troops ' 21,22 

The Province Defends itself for Thirty Years . . . . 23, 24 

But at Last Strives to Divide its Foes by Calling in Pirates against the 

Picts '. . . . . ; : . . ... 24, 25 

CHAPTER I. 

THE CONQUEST OF THE SAXON SHORE. 449-r. 500. 

449. Three Jutish Keels Land in Thanet 26 

Their Landing-place at Ebbsfleet . . .' . . ". .28 

Their Encampment in Thanet 29 

The Jutes Aid the Britons ... . . . . . • 31 



x CONTENTS. 

A.D. PAGE 

Quarrel between Jutes and Britons 31 

Obstacles in the Way of Jutish Attack . 32 

Their Sack of Durovernum 33 

March on the Medvvay Valley 33 

455. Battle of Aylesford 34 

457. Battle of the Cray Drives Britons to London 35 

Revolution in Britain under Aurelius Ambrosianus .... 36 

Aurelius Drives Back the Jutes into Thanet 36 

The Fortress ofRichborough 36 

465. The Final Overthrow of*the Britons at Wipped's-fieet .... 37 

465-473. Conquest of the Rest of the Caint 37,38 

The Jutes Forced to Halt by Physical Obstacles 38 

Descents of the Saxons on either Flank of the Caint . . . 38,39 

477. Saxon War-bands under JEUa. Land at Selsea 40 

477-491. The Coast slowly Won by these South Sexe 41 

491. Siege of Anderida 41 

Roman Life here as Shown in Villa at Bignor ..... 43 

Descents of Saxons in District North of the Thames .... 44 

Fall of Camulodunum 45 

Character of the Settlement of these East Sexe 45 

Barriers which Prevent their Advance into the Island .... 47 

4f;0. Landing of the Engle . -47 

Their German Home-land .48 

Their Conquest of East Anglia 49 

Settlement of the North-folk and South-folk 50 

Probably Refrained from Attacking Central Britain . . . 51 

Their Settlement Completes the Conquest of the Saxon Shore . . 52 



CHAPTER II. 

CONQUESTS OF THE ENGLE. c. 500-r. 570. 

The Bulk of Britain still Guarded by Strong Natural Barriers . 53, 54 

The Engle Stretch Northward along the Coast 54 

e. 500. They Conquer the District about Lindum 55 

Settlement of the Lindiswara 56 

Other Engle Seize Holderness 56 

And Establish a Kingdom of the Deirans in the Wolds and District 

round 58 

Eboracum 58, 59 

500-520. Fall of Eboracum 60 

Conquest of the Plain of the Ouse , .61 

Conquest of Eastern and Western Yorkshire ..... 62, 63 

Flight of the Britons Shown in Remains at Settle 64 

Attack of the Engle still further North . . . . . . .65 

The Roman Wall .66 

Little Permanent Change Wrought by Pictish Inroads . . . 67, 68 

500-547. Conquest and Settlement of the Engle in the Basin of the Tweed . 68, 69 



CONTENTS. xi 

A.D. PAGE 

547. Ida Sets Up the Kingdom of the Bernicians at Bamborough . . . 69 

iil-c. 580. Slow Advance of these Bernicians from the Coast 70 

The Engle in the Valley of the Trent 72 

Physical Character of the Trent Valley 7 2 

Descent of the Engle from Lindum 73 

The Snottingas Settle on the Edge of Sherwood . . . . -75 

The Bulk of the Engle Follow the Fosse Road to the Valley of the Soar 76 

550. Fall of Ratse and Settlement of the Middle Engle 76 

Meanwhile the Gyrwas Break in on the Towns around the Wash . . 77 
Their Two Tribes, the North and South Gyrwas .... 78, 79 

The Engle Attack our Northamptonshire 79 

Its Physical Character at this Time 80 

Settlement of the South Engle 80 

c. 560. Advance of the West Engle 81 

The Pec-ssetan Settle in our Derbyshire ( 81 

The Rest of the West Engle in our Staffordshire 82 

The West Engle become Known as Mercians, or Men of the March . 82 



CHAPTER III. 

CONQUESTS OF THE SAXONS, c. 500-577. 

Character of British Coast to the Westward of Sussex ....?'' 

The Estuary of the Southampton Water Leads up to Gwent ... 84 

495-514. Attempts of Saxons Known as Gewissas to Penetrate by this Estuary . 84 

519. Conquest of the Gwent in Battle of Charford 85 

519. Cerdic and Cynric become Kings of the West Saxons .... 85 

520. Gewissas Repulsed by Britons at Mount Badon 86 

530. Conquest of the Isle of Wight, and Settlement of Jutes in it . . .87 

520-552. Long Pause in West-Saxon Advance . 87 

Physical Barriers that Arrested them 88 

552. Cynric again Advances to the West 88 

552. Fall of Sorbiodunum 89 

552-556. Settlement of the Wil-sastan 90 

556. Victory of the West Saxons at Barbury Hill Makes them Masters of the 

Marlborough Downs j ... 91 

Conquest of our Berkshire 92 

Britain now Open to the West Saxons 93 

They are Able to Advance along the Upper Thames .... 93 
Obstacles which had till now Prevented the English Advance from the 

Mouth of the Thames 94 

The Water-way Blocked by the Fortress of London .... 95 
Original Character of the Ground about London .... 95~97 

London not a British Town 97 

Its Site the Centre of a Vast Solitude. 98 

Its Rapid Growth under the Romans 99, 100 

Its Importance as the Centre of their Road System . . . .101 
Stages of its Growth 101,102 



x [[ CONTENTS. 

A.D. PAGE 

. Its Later Greatness 102 

.It long Resists Successfully the East Saxons and the Jutes of Kent . 103 

Advance of the East Saxons on our Hertfordshire 104 

540-560. Fall of Verulamium . . - 105 

560-568. Fall of London • . . 105,106 

Settlement of the Middle Saxons . 106 

Growth of Kent since its Conquest 107, 108 

568. The Fall of London Sets the Jutes Free to Advance to the West . . 109 
Meanwhile the West Saxons are Advancing on the Same Tract from 

the West 109 

Their Road Open to them by the Fall of Calleva . . . . 110,111 

Their Advance along the Thames Valley 112 

568. They Meet and Defeat the Jutes at Wimbledon . . . . . 113 

Settlement of the West Saxons in our Surrey 114 

The District of the Four Towns 114-116 

The Icknield Way Guides the West Saxons to it . . . . . 117 

They Cross the Thames at Wallingford 119 

571. Cufhwulf's Victory at Bedford 119 

West Saxons Occupy the District of the Four Towns .... 120 
The Close of their Advance to the North probably Due to the Presence 

of the Engle in Mid-Britain 121 

577. They Attack the Severn Valley 122 

League of the Three Towns against them . . . . . . 123 

577. Their Victory at Deorham 124 

Their Settlement as the Hwiccas along the Lower Severn, on the Cots- 
wolds, and by the Avon 125, 126 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SETTLEMENT OF THE CONQUERORS. 

At the Battle of Deorham Half Britain has become English . . . 127 
Henceforth the Work of the English is that of Settlement rather than 

Conquest 127, 128 

Character of the Settlement Determined by that of the Conquest . . 128 
Characteristics of the Conquest— 

. (1) The Weakness of the Attack 128 

(2) Stubbornness of the Defence ...... 129 

(3) Nature of the Conquered Country 129 

Hence the Slowness of the Conquest and the Driving-off of the Con- 
quered People 130 

The Britons, not Slaughtered, but Driven Off . . . . . .131 

Proofs of this Displacement — 

(1) The New Inhabitants Know themselves only as English- 

men 133 

(2) The Unconquered Britons Know them only as Strangers . 133 

(3) Evidence of Local and Personal Names . . . . 134 

(4) Evidence of Language ... . . . . . 135 



CONTENTS. x iii 

PAtSE 

. (5) Evidence of Changed Institutions " . . . . 136 

= (6) Evidence Drawn from Destruction of Towns . . . 137 
(7) Evidence Drawn from the Change of Religion . . 138,139 
But Roman Britain still Influenced the New England — 

(1) It Gave it its Limits . . . . . . . 140 

. (2) It Determined the Bounds of Kingdoms and Tribes . 141, 142 
, (3) It Influenced the Social Settlement ... . . . 142 

But in all Other Ways Roman Life Disappeared . . . . . 143 

The Change Shown in the Conquest of Kent . . ... 143 

. (1) The Caintin Roman Times . . . .... 144 

,(2) The Caint after the Jutish Conquest . . . . 145,146 

The New English Society that Sprang up on this Ruin . . . 147, 148 
The Slowness of the Conquest Allows the Transfer of the Whole Eng- 
lish, Life . 149 

The Settlement that of.Numerous Separate Folks . . . . . 151 

Traces of such Folks in Kent . . . . . . . . . ; . r5 r 

But Early Fusion s of such Fglks in Three Great Kingdoms . . 152,153 
And Recognition by the Three Kingdoms of a National Unity . <, 153 
Character of.the English Civilization ........ . . . 154 

(1) The Saxons Long in Contact with Rome . ... . 154 

(2) Their Early Art 155 

. (3) Their Literature ....... ^ ., . . . 156^157 

. (4) Their Moral Temper . . . . . . . 158, 159 

(5) .Their Religion . . . . . . . 160, 161 

(6) Its Weak Hold on the Settlers 162, 163 

(7) Their Military Life 164, 165 

The Folk itself. Its Shape Drawn from War .... 166, 167 

(1) The Host . 167 

(2) The Military Organization Shapes the Civil Organization . 169 

(3) The Hundred-moot and Folk-moot .... 170, 171 

(4) The King. 172 

(5) Eorl and Ceorl . . . 173 

. (6) TheThegn . ....... i . 174 

The English Township . , 175, 176 

. (1) .Its Boundaries 177,178 

. (2) .The Freeman's Home 178 

. (3) The Farm and its Labor 180, 181 

. (4) J The 1 BondofttieKin . . . . , . . .^182,183 
. (5) .The. Common Holding of Land . . . . .i '. 184 

. (6). The.Unfr.ee. ... 185 

(7) The Slave . . . . . . . . . ; . 186 

; (8) The Tun-moot . 187, 188 

CHAPTER V. 
THE STRIFE OF THE CONQUERORS. 577-617. 

Change of Relations between Conquerors and Conquered . .' . 189 
Early Severance "between the Two Races - . r ■ -.......'. . . '.\ .190 



x i v CONTENTS. 

A.D. PAGE 

Shown in the Story of Beino . 190,191 

This Passes Away with the Battle of Deorham 192 

The Britons no longer Driven from the Soil 192 

Their Increasing Numbers as the Conquest Spreads Westward . . 193 
Change, too, in Relations of the Conquerors themselves . . 193, 194 

They Divide into Greater and Lesser Powers 195 

After-history a Strife of the Greater Powers for Supremacy . . . 195 
The West Saxons under Ceawlin the Leading English Power . 195, 196 

583. Ceawlin's March on the Upper Severn Valley 198 

Storm of Uriconium 199 

Ceawlin Defeated at Faddiley . 200 

Rising of the Hwiccas Throws Ceawlin Back on the Older Wessex . 201 

591. Ceawlin Defeated at Wanborough 202 

Internal Troubles of the West Saxons 202 

iEthelberht of Kent Seizes the Opportunity 203 

r. 584-589. His Marriage with Bertha 204 

Canterbury 205 

Before 597. yEthelberht's Supremacy 206 

Its Limits 207 

Before 588. War between Bernicians and Deirans 208 

585-588. Gregory and the English Slaves at Rome 210 

588. Death of JElla. 211 

588. Conquest of Deira by the Bernician King ^Ethelric . . . .211 

The Union of the Two Kingdoms in Northumbria 211 

The Three Great Kingdoms fairly Established 212 

593. yEthelfrith Succeeds iEthelric as King of Northumbria . . . . 212 

597. Roman Mission to the English under Augustine 213 

iEthelberht Receives the Missionaries in Thanet 213 

They Settle at Canterbury 214 

Future Issues of their Coming 215 

597. Conversion of iEthelberht and his People 216 

601. Gregory's Plan for the Ecclesiastical Organization of Britain . . 216, 217 

Augustine's Interview with the Welsh Clergy 217 

Condition of the Britons at this Time 218 

The Stubbornness of their Resistance 218,219 

Disorganization of What Remained of Britain .... 219,220 

Rejection of Augustine by the British Clergy 221 

Consolidation of the British States 222 

Its Result a Revival of the British Strength 223 

Alliance of Northern Britons with the Scots 224 

603. Their Force Crushed by ^Ethelfrith in the Battle of Daegsastan . . 225 
Northumbrian Supremacy Established over Northern Britons . 225, 226 
iEthelberht at last Resolves to Carry Out Gregory's Scheme . 226, 227 

604. Establishment of Bishop at Rochester 228 

604. Bishop Set over the East Saxons at London . . . . . 228, 229 

Raedwald, King of East Anglians, Baptized at ^Ethelberht's Court . 229 

The East Anglians Reject Christianity 230 

?607. Fall of ^Ethelberht's Supremacy 230 



CONTENTS. XV 

A.D. . PAGE 

Rsedwald Establishes a Supremacy over Mid-Britain .... 230 

This Revolution Aided by the Troubles of the West Saxons . . 231 

And by ^Ethelfrith's Embarrassments with the House of JEUa. . . 232 
The House of Mlla. Finds Shelter among the Welsh, who are Attacked 

by ^Ethelfrith 232 

Position and Importance of Chester in Roman Times .... 233 

613. iEthelfrith's Victory at Chester 234,235 

Results of this Battle on the Britons and on Northumbria . . . 236 
yEfhelfrith Drawn to the South by the Weakness of Wessex and Fall 

of Kent 238 

616. The East Saxons Revolt from Kent at ^Ethelberht's Death . . . 238 
iEthelfrith Brought into Collision with Raedwald by the House of ^Ella 239 

617. Eadwine Seeks Shelter in East Anglia 240 

Hesitations of Rasdwald 241 

Eadwine and the Stranger 242 

617. iEthelfrith Defeated by Rasdwald at the Idle 243,244 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE NORTHUMBRIAN SUPREMACY. 617-659. 

1 7-633. Eadwine Established as King of Northumbria 245 

The Kingdom of Elmet ......... 246, 247 

Eadwine's Conquest of Elmet 249 

His Power at Sea, and Conquests of Anglesea and Man .... 250 

He Establishes his Supremacy over Mid-Britain 251 

626. His Victory over the West Saxons 251 

Eadwine Supreme over All the English save Kent 252 

Character of his Rule over Northumbria 252 

He is Pressed by his Kentish Wife to Become Christian . . . 255 

627. The Northumbrian Witan Accept Christianity .... 255, 256 

The New Faith Rejected in East Anglia 257 

Rising of the Mercians 258 

Penda King of the Mercians . . 258 

Penda Becomes Supreme over Mid-Britain 259 

His Battle with the West Saxons at Cirencester . . . . . 259 

Probable Annexation of the Hwiccan Country 260 

Strife between Penda and Eadwine for East Anglia . . ■ . . 260 

Alliance of Penda with Cadwallon 261 

The Hatfield Fen 262 

633. Eadwine Defeated and Slain by Penda at Hatfield 264 

Northumbria Broken Up into its Two Kingdoms 264 

Penda Conquers East Anglia 265 

Oswald King of the Bernicians . . 266 

Battle of the Heaven-field 268 

From this Time the Struggle of the Welsh is a Mere Struggle of Self- 

Defence 268 

635. Oswald Calls for Missionaries from Ireland 269 



xv i CONTENTS. 

A.D. PAGE 

Influence of its Physical Characteristics on the History of Ireland . 269 

Early Ireland a Huge Grazing-ground . 270 

Its Primitive Institutions -. . .271 

Its Contrast with the Rest of Europe 272,273 

Story of Patrick . . ... . . . . . . , . 274 

The Conversion of Ireland 275 

The Irish Church Moulded by the Social Condition of Ireland . 276, 277 
Influence of the Celtic Temper on Irish Christianity .... 278 

Its Poetic and Romantic Temper . . ...... . . . 279 

The Foreign Missions of the Irish Church .. ., • . . . 280 

635. Aidan Summoned by Oswald to Lindisfarne 281 

The Irish Missionaries in Northumbria . . . . . . 281, 282 

Oswald Re-establishes the Northumbrian Supremacy . . . 283, 284 

642. Oswald Slain by Penda at. the Maserfeld , 286 

Northumbria again Broken Up. 287 

642-670. Oswiu King of the Bernicians . ,.,-.. ... . . -.287 

Penda Ravages Bernicia 287 

651. Oswiu Reconquers Deira 288 

Final Restoration of Northumbria 289 

652. Conversion of Penda's Son Peada . . . . . . . 290 

Conversion of the East Saxons . 291 

654. Penda Reconquers East Anglia . . . .... . . 292 

Penda Attacks Oswiu 293 

655.. Penda Defeated and Slain at the Winwaed . . . . . . 293 

Wreck of the Mercian State . . . 294, 295 

Oswiu Supreme, over all the English 296 

659. Revolt of the Mercians under Wulfhere 296-298 

Abandonment by Northumbria of her Effort after Supremacy . 298, 299 
. (Note on the Impcrium of the Early Kings) ..... 298-300 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOMS. 659-690. 

With the Failure of Northumbria National Union Seems Impossible . 301 
Entry of a New Element into English Life in the Church . . . 361 
All the English States save Sussex now Christian . . . .. . 302 

The Organizing Force of Roman Christianity . . . '. . 302 

But the Dominant Christianity in Britain now Irish .... 303 

Activity of the Irish Church in the North after the Winwasd . 1 . 304 

651-676. The Mission Work of Cuthbert . 304-308 

The Irish Church Devoid of Organizing Power . . ... . 308 

The Success would have Brought About a Religious Schism in 

Britain . t 308, 309 



The Roman Party in Northumbria •. 
Benedict Biscop its Head . 
Still more Energetic Action of Wilfrid . 
664. The Irish Party Defeated at the Synod of Wr 



. 310 

... .312 

. . . . .312 

itby . .",..'. ; 1 313 



CONTENTS. xv ii 



PAGE 



The Synod Averted the Religious Isolation, and Secured the Religious 

Oneness of England . • 3 X 4 

Importance of the Primacy in the Reunited Church . . . 315, 316 
Theodore, Named Primate by the Pope, Lands in Britain . . .317 

Mercia now the Most Active English State 318 

Wulf here King of the Mercians .318 

Re-establishes the Mercian Supremacy in Mid-Britain . . 318,319 

661. Extends it over Essex, Surrey, and Sussex ...... 319 

39-672. Theodore Journeys over All England . 321 

He is Everywhere Received as Primate 321 

His First Ordering of the English Dioceses 322 

673. Calls a Council at Hertford 323 

Influence of these Councils on National Development . . . 323,324 

Establishes a School at Canterbury 325 

Influence of this School on English Literature 326 

690. Ealdhelm in Wessex 326, 327 

50-652. Conquest of the Forest of Braden by the West Saxons . . . 328,329 

Maidulf Sets Up his "Burh" of Malmesbury 330 

Ealdhelm's Work in this Forest Tract 330 

Theodore's Second Organization of the Dioceses ..... 331 
The English Dioceses Coextensive with the Kingdoms . . . 332 

Theodore Subdivides them by Falling Back on the Tribal Demarcations 333 
He Divides the See of East Anglia. ....... 333 

His Division of the Mercian See 333 

Mercia Under King iEthelred 334 

The Monastic Movement of this Time Based on — 

(1) A Passion for Solitude 335 

(2) Social Impulse which Followed it 335 

The Monasteries Rather Social and Industrial Centres than Religious . 335 

Effect of this Impulse in Reclaiming the Country 336 

The Forest of Arden 338>339 

The Foundation of Evesham 340 

The Fens of the Wash 341,342 

Guthlac at Croyland 342 

The Thames Valley . . . 344 

The Nuns of Barking 345 

Survey of the Rest of Mid-Britain 346,347 

Theodore Invited to Organize the Church in Northumbria . . -347 

Ecgfrith, King of the Northumbrians 347 

His Conquest of Northern Lancashire and the Lake District . . 347 

Carlisle and its Continuous Life . . 348 

Ecgfrith's Triumphs over the Picts 349 

Ecgfrith Defeats Wulfhere and Recovers Lindsey 350 

Condition of Northumbria 350 

Monastic Colonies along the Coast 351 

Ebba's House at Coldingham 352 

Relations of these Monastic Colonies to the Realm, and its Defence . 353 
They Bring Labor again into Honor 354, 355 

B 



709. 



675. 



678. 



679. 

682. 
684. 
685. 

685. 

690. 



xv iii CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Influence of the Movement on Poetry 356 

Hilda's House at Streonashalh . . . . . . . 356, 357 

Story of Csedmon 358 

Character of Casdmon's Poem 358, 359 

Influence of the Monastic Movement on Art 361,362 

Greatness of Bishop Wilfrid 363 

Theodore Divides the Northumbrian Dioceses 363 

Wilfrid Appeals to Rome and is Exiled from Northumbria . . . 364 
He Takes Refuge among and Converts the South Saxons . . . 364 

War between Mercia and Northumbria 366 

Ecgfrith Forced to Cede Lindsey 366 

Theodore Creates Two Fresh Bishoprics in the North . . . . 366 
Attack of the Northumbrian Fleet on the Shores of Ireland . . . 366 

Rising of the Picts against Ecgfrith . . 367 

Cuthbert's Words of Ill-omen 367 

Ecgfrith and his Army Slain by the Picts at Nectansmere . . . 368 
Wilfrid Submits to Theodore and is Restored to York .... 368 

Theodore Dies 369 

Later Completion of the Work of Organization by the Development of 
a Parochial System, by the Endowment of the Clergy, and by the 
Provision of Discipline within the Church . . . 369,370 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE THREE KINGDOMS. 690-830. 

Silent Influence of Theodore's Work in Promoting National Unity 
The Political Disunion Seems Greater than Ever . 
Weakness and Anarchy of the West Saxons since Faddiley 
But their Real Strength not Diminished .... 
682. King Centwine Drives the Britons to the Quantocks 
685. Ceadwalla Unites All the West Saxons Under his Rule . 
Conquers Sussex and the Isle of Wight .... 
688. Fails in an Attack on Kent and Withdraws to Rome 
688-726. Ine Reunites the West Saxons after an Interval of Anarchy 
688-694. Forces Kent, Essex, and London to Own his Supremacy 
710. Attacks the Kingdom of Dyvnaint .... 
Founds Taunton in the Conquered Territory . ' . 

Somerset after its Conquest 

Mingling of the Two Races seen at Glastonbury . 
Seen too in the Double City of Exeter . 
Ine Divides the Bishopric of Wessex 
715. He Repulses the Mercian King Ceolred at Wanborough 

Fresh Outbreak of Anarchy in Wessex . 
726. Ine Dies on Pilgrimage to Rome .... 

718-757. yEthelbald King of Mercia 

728-733. ^Ethelbald Overruns all Wessex .... 
733-754. His Supremacy Owned by all the Southern English 



37 



371 
371 
1.372 
372 
373- 
374 
374 
374 
375 
375 
376 
377 
378 
379 
379 
380 
38i 
381 
382 
383 
384 
384 



CONTENTS. x i x 

A.D. . PAGE 

754. The West Saxons Rise and Defeat iEthelbald at Burford . . . 384 

Meanwhile Northumbria Stands Apart from the Rest of Britain . . 385 

Aldfrith King of Northumbria 385 

Peaceful Growth of Learning under his Rule 385 

This Learning Summed Up in Baeda 386 

His Life at Jarrow 387 

His Learning and Works 388 

His Ecclesiastical History ........ 389, 390 

The Story of his Death 391 

His Scheme of Religious Reformation in the North .... 392 

735. Ecgberht becomes Archbishop of York 392 

738-758. His Brother Eadberht King of the Northumbrians 392 

740. Eadberht Repulses both the Mercians and the Picts .... 392 

750. Takes Kyle from the Britons of Strathclyde 392 

York under Eadberht 394 

The School of York under Ecgberht 395 

756. Eadberht Defeated by the Picts -396 

758. Eadberht and Ecgberht both Withdraw to a Monastery .... 396 

The After-history of Northumbria one of Weakness and Anarchy . . 397 

Change in the Character of our History 397 

England becomes Linked to the Rest of Western Christendom . . 397 
The Change Brought About by the Joint Work of English Missionaries 

and the Franks 398 

Growth of the Frankish Kingdom 399 

The Franks under Pippin Support the English Missionaries . . . 399 

690. Mission of Willibrord 400,401 

718-753. Mission Work of Boniface 401,402 

Conversion of Germany by the English Missionaries .... 403 
Its Results on the History of the Papacy and the Empire . . . 403 
It Draws the Frankish Power into Connection with the English king- 
doms 405 

Britain now Definitely Parted into Three Kingdoms .... 405 

Losses of Mercia after the Battle of Burford 406 

758-796. Offa King of Mercia 406 

773. Offa Recovers Kent, Essex, and London 406 

777. Drives the West Saxons from the District of the Four Towns . . 406 

779. Drives the Welsh from Shropshire 407 

754-786. The West Saxons Conquer Devon 408 

787. Ecgberht, Driven out of Wessex, Takes Refuge at the Frankish Court . 409 

787. Offa Creates the Archbishopric of Lichfield 409 

Effect of this had it Lasted 410 

Policy of the Franks towards the English Kingdoms . . . .411 

Friendly Relations of Charles the Great and Offa 412 

Offa, however, on his Guard against Charles 413 

English Exiles at the Frankish Court 414 

794. Offa Seizes East Anglia 4 J 6 

803. His Successor Cenwulf Suppresses the Mercian Archbishopric . . 416 

802. Ecgberht becomes King of Wessex 418 



xx CONTENTS. 

A.D. PAGE 

808. The Northumbrian King Eardwulf Restored by Pope and Emperor . 419 

815-825. Ecgberht's Conquest of Cornwall . . 420 

Close of the Struggle with the Britons 420 

825. Beornwulf of Mercia Attacks Ecgberht 422 

His Defeat at Ellandun 422 

Ecgberht Seizes Kent and Essex 422 

825-827. East Anglia Rises and Defeats the Mercians 422 

829. Ecgberht Conquers Mercia 422, 423 

829. Northumbria Submits to Ecgberht 423 

All Englishmen in Britain United under one Ruler .... 424 



LIST OF MAPS. 



TAGS 



I. The English Kingdoms in 600 to face 26 

II. Roman Kent 30 

III. Eastern Britain 39 

IV. Eastern Britain 46 

V. Mid-Britain 57 

VI. Northern Britain 67 

VII. Mid-Britain 71 

VIII. Central Britain 74 

IX. Eastern Britain 78 

X. Southern Britain 85 

XI. Early London 96 

XII. Southern Britain no 

XIII. Eastern Britain 120 

XIV. Western Britain . . 122 

XV. Britain in 580 197 

XVI. Southern Britain 203 

XVII. Britain in 593 . 209 

XVIII. Britain in 616 237 

XIX. Britain in 626 253 

XX. Britain in 634 267 

XXI. Britain in 640 285 

XXII. Britain in 658 297 

XXIII. Britain in 665 321 

XXIV. Southwestern Britain 328 

XXV. Mid-Britain from 700 to 800 337 



XXVI. Southwestern Britain 



377 



XXVII. Britain in 750 383 

XXVIII. Britain in 792 417 

XXIX. Southwestern Britain 421 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND 




THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



INTRODUCTION. 

BRITAIN AND ITS FOES. 

The island of Britain was the latest of Rome's introd. 
conquests in the West. Though it had been twice The 
attacked by Julius Caesar, his withdrawal and the conquest. 
inaction of the earlier emperors promised it a con- 
tinued freedom ; but, a hundred years after Caesar's 
landing, Claudius undertook its conquest, and so 
swiftly was the work carried out by his generals and 
those of his successor that before thirty years were 
over the bulk of the country had passed beneath 
the Roman sway. 1 The island was thus fortunate 
in the moment of its conquest. It was spared the 

1 In these few introductory pages, I need scarcely say that I do 
not attempt to write a history of Roman Britain. Such a history, 
indeed, can hardly be attempted with any profit till the scattered 
records of researches among the roads, villas, tombs, etc., of this 
period have been in some way brought together and made acces- 
sible. What I attempt is simply to note those special features of 
the Roman rule which have left their impress on our after -his- 
tory. 

I 



2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. pillage and exactions which ruined the provinces of 
Britain Rome under the Republic, while it felt little of the 
a Foes! S ev ^ s which still clung to their administration under 
— the earlier Empire. The age in which its organiza- 
tion was actively carried out was the age of the An- 
tonines, when the provinces became objects of spe- 
cial care on the part of the central government, 1 and 
when the effects of its administration were aided by 
peace without and a profound tranquillity within. 
The absence of all record of the change indicates 
the quietness and ease with which Britain was trans- 
formed into a Roman province. A census and a 
land-survey must have formed here, as elsewhere, 
indispensable preliminaries for the exaction of the 
poll-tax and the land-tax, which were the main bur- 
dens of Rome's fiscal system. Within the province 
the population would, in accordance with her inva- 
riable policy, be disarmed ; while a force of three 
legions was stationed, partly in the north to guard 
against the unconquered Britons, and partly in the 
west to watch over the tribes which still remained 
half subdued. Though the towns were left in some 
measure to their own self-government, the bulk of 
the island seems to have been ruled by military and 
financial administrators, whose powers were practi- 
cally unlimited. But, rough as their rule may have 
been, it secured peace and good order; and peace 
and good order were all that was needed to ensure 

1 Capitolinus says of Antoninus Pius, " With such diligence did 
he rule the subject peoples that he cared for all men and all things 
as his own. All the provinces flourished under him." Hadrian's 
solicitude was shown by his ceaseless wanderings over the whole 
Empire, and by the general system of border fortifications of which 
his wall in Britain formed a part. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 3 

material development. This development soon made introd. 
itself felt. Commerce sprang up in the ports of Brit- Britain 
ain. Its harvests became so abundant that it was a Foes. 3 
able at need to supply the necessities of Gaul. Tin 
mines were worked in Cornwall, lead mines in Som- 
erset and Northumberland, and iron mines in the 
forest of Dean. The villas and homesteads which, 
as the spade of our archaeologists proves, lay scat- 
tered over the whole face of the country show the 
general prosperity of the island. 

The extension of its road system, and the up- Roman 
growth of its towns, tell, above all, how rapidly Brit- 
ain was incorporated into the general body of the 
Empire. The beacon-fire which blazed on the cliffs 
of Dover to guide the vessels from the Gaulish 
shores to the port of Richborough proclaimed the 
union of Britain with the mainland ; while the route 
which crossed the downs of Kent from Richborough 
to the Thames linked the roads that radiated from 
London over the surface of the island with the gen- 
eral net-work of communications alon^ which flow- 
ed the social and political life of the Roman world. 
When the Emperor Hadrian traversed these roads 
at the opening of the second century, a crowd of 
towns had already risen along their course. 1 In the 
southeast Durovernum, the later Canterbury, con- 

1 The bulk of these towns undoubtedly occupied British sites, 
and were probably only modifications of communities which had 
already taken a municipal shape in the interval of rapid native de- 
velopment between the landing of Caesar and the landing of Clau- 
dius. But these, after all, can have been little more than collec- 
tions of huts, like the Gaulish communities which had risen under 
like circumstances ; and the difference between such a community 
and the meanest Roman town was even materially immense. 



a THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. nected Richborough with London. In the south- 
Britain west Venta, or Winchester, formed the centre of the 
a Foes. S Gwent, or open downs of our Hampshire ; while goutv 
provincials found their way to the hot springs of 
Bath, and Exeter looked out from its rise over the 
Exe on the wild moorlands of the Cornish peninsula. 
Colchester and Norwich stand on the sites of Ro- 
man cities which gathered to them the new life of 
the eastern coast ; and Lindum has left its name to 
the Lincolnshire which was formed in later days 
around its ruins. Names as familiar meet us if we 
turn to central Britain. The uplands of the Cots- 
wolds were already crowned with the predecessor 
of our Cirencester, as those of Hertfordshire were 
crowned by that of our St. Albans ; while Leicester 
represents as early a centre of municipal life in the 
basin of the Trent. Even on the skirts of the prov- 
ince life and industry sheltered themselves under the 
Roman arms. A chain of lesser places studded the 
road from York to the savage regions of the north, 
where the eagles of a legion protected the settlers 
who were spreading to the Forth and the Clyde. 
Caerleon sprang from the quarters of another legion 
which held down the stubborn freedom that linger- 
ed among the mountains of Wales, and guarded the 
towns which were rising at Gloucester and Wroxeter 
in the valley of the Severn ; while Chester owes its 
existence to the station of a third on the Dee, whose 
work was to bridle the tribes of North Wales and 
of Cumbria. 1 

1 It is in the age of the Antonines that we first get a detailed 
knowledge of Britain in the geographical survey of Ptolemy, which 
gives us the towns of the native tribes (Monum. Hist. Brit., pp. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. r 

It is easy, however, to exaggerate the civilization introd. 
of Britain. Even within the province south of the Britain 
Firths the evidence of inscriptions 1 shows that large a Foes. S 
tracts of country lay practically outside the Roman In ^.f ect 
life. Though no district was richer or more peo- civilization 

Y -i . of Britain. 

pled than the southwest, our Devonshire and our 
Cornwall seem to have remained almost wholly Cel- 
tic. Wales was never really Romanized ; its tribes 
were held in check by the legionaries at Chester and 
Caerleon, but as late as the beginning of the third 
century they called for repression from the Emperor 
Severus as much as the Picts. 2 The valleys of the 
Thames and of the Severn were fairly inhabited, 
but there are fewer proofs of Roman settlement in 
the valley of the Trent; and though the southern 
part of Yorkshire was rich and populous, Northern 
Britain, as a whole, was little touched by the new civ- 
ilization. And even in the south this civilization 
can have had but little depth or vitality. Large and 
important as were some of its towns, hardly any 
inscriptions have been found to tell of the presence 
of a vigorous municipal life. Unlike its neighbor 
Gaul, Britain contributed nothing to the intellectual 
riches of the Empire ; and not one of the poets or 
rhetoricians of the time is of British origin. Even 

x.-xvi.) ; and in the account of its roads and towns given in the 
Antonine Itinerary (ibid, xx.-xxii.). A few milestones survive, and 
the names of Hadrian and Antoninus Pius, which they bear, fix the 
general date of this road-making. 

1 See Hubner, Inscriptiones Britannia^ Latinae (forming the sev- 
enth volume of the Corpus Inscriptionum Latinarum, published at 
Berlin, 1873), a book which must furnish the groundwork of any 
history of Roman Britain. 

2 There are few inscriptions of Roman date from Devon and 
Cornwall ; none from Wales. 



6 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. moral movements found little foothold in the island. 
Britain When Christianity became the religion of the Em- 
a Foes tS pire under the house of Constantine, Britain must 
have become nominally Christian ; and the presence 
of British bishops at ecclesiastical councils is enough 
to prove that its Christianity was organized in the 
ordinary form. 1 But as yet no Christian inscription 
or ornament has been found in any remains of ear- 
lier date than the close of the Roman rule ; and the 
undoubted existence of churches at places such as 
Canterbury, or London, or St. Albans, only gives 
greater weight to the fact that no trace of such 
buildings has been found in the sites of other cities 
which have been laid open by archaeological re- 
search. 
its life Far, indeed, as was Britain from the centre of the 
military. Empire, had the Roman energy wielded its full force 
in the island it would have Romanized Britain as 
completely as it Romanized the bulk of Gaul. But 
there was little in the province to urge Rome to such 
an effort. It was not only the most distant of all her 
Western provinces, but it had little natural wealth, 
and it was vexed by a ceaseless border warfare with 
the unconquered Britons, the Picts, or Caledonians, 
beyond the northern firths. There was little in its 
material resources to tempt men to that immigration 
from the older provinces of the Empire which was 
the main agent in civilizing a new conquest. On 



1 Stubbs and Haddan (Councils of Great Britain, i. 1-40) have 
collected the few facts which form the meagre evidence for the ex- 
istence of Christianity in Britain. Even of this meagre list, some 
are doubted by so competent an observer as Mr. Raine (Historians 
of the Church of York, Introd. p. xx. note). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. m 

the contrary, the harshness of a climate that knew introd. 
neither olive nor vine deterred men of the south Britain 
from such a settlement. The care with which every a Foes. S 
villa is furnished with its elaborate system of hot-air 
flues shows that the climate of Britain was as intol- 
erable to the Roman provincial as that of India, in 
spite of punkas and verandas, is to the English ci- 
vilian or the English planter. The result was that 
the province remained a mere military department 
of the Empire. The importance of its towns was 
determined by military considerations. In the ear- 
liest age of the occupation, when the conquerors 
aimed at a hold on the districts near to Gaul, Col- 
chester, Verulam, and London were the greatest of 
British towns. As the tide of war rolled away to 
the north and west, Chester and Caerleon rivalled 
their greatness, and York became the capital of the 
province. It is a significant fact that the bulk of 
the monuments which have been found in Britain re- 
late to military life. Its inscriptions and tombs are 
mostly those of soldiers. Its mightiest work was the 
great wall and line of legionary stations which guard- 
ed the province from the Picts. Its only historic 
records are records of border forays against the bar- 
barians. If we strive to realize its character from 
the few facts that we possess, we are forced to look 
on Britain as a Roman Algeria. 

It was not merely its distance from the seat of F h sical 

J m m aspect of 

rule or the later date of its conquest that hindered Britain. 
the province from passing completely into the gen- 
eral body of the Empire. Its physical and its social 
circumstances offered yet greater obstacles to any 
effectual civilization. Marvellous as was the rapid 



g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. transformation of Britain in the hands of its con- 
Britain querors, and greatly as its outer aspect came to dif- 
& Foes! S fe r from that of the island in which Claudius landed, 
it was far from being in this respect the land of later 
days. In spite of its roads, its towns, and its mining- 
works, it remained, even at the close of the Roman 
rule, an " isle of blowing woodland," a wild and half- 
reclaimed country, the bulk of whose surface was oc- 
cupied by forest and waste. The rich and lower 
soil of the river valleys, indeed, which is now the fa- 
vorite home of agriculture, had in the earliest times 
been densely covered with primeval scrub ; and the 
only open spaces were those whose nature fitted 
them less for the growth of trees — the chalk downs 
and oolitic uplands that stretched in long lines 
across the face of Britain from the Channel to the 
Northern Sea. In the earliest traces of our histo- 
ry, these districts became the seats of a population 
and a tillage which have long fled from them, as the 
gradual clearing-away of the woodland drew men to 
the richer soil. Such a transfer of population seems 
faintly to have begun even before the coming of the 
Romans; and the roads which they drove through the 
heart of the country, the waste caused by their mines, 
the ever-widening circle of cultivation round their 
towns, must have quickened this social change. But 
even after four hundred years of their occupation the 
change was far from having been completely brought 
about. It is mainly in the natural clearings of the 
uplands that the population concentrated itself at 
the close of the Roman rule, and it is over these dis- 
tricts that the ruins of the villas or country-houses 
of the Roman landowners are most thickly scattered. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. g 

Such spaces were found, above all, at the extremi- introd. 
ties of the great chalk ranges which give form and Britain 
character to the scenery of Southern Britain. Half- a £ es. S 
way along our southern coast, the huge block of up- ^ 
land which we know as Salisbury Plain and the Marl- downs - 
borough Downs rises in gentle undulations from the 
alluvial flat of the New Forest to the lines of escarp- 
ment which overlook the vale of Pewsey and the 
upper basin of the Thames. From the eastern side 
of this upland three ranges of heights run athwart 
Southern Britain to the northeast and the east, the 
first passing from the Wiltshire Downs by the Chil- 
terns to the uplands of East Anglia, while the second 
and third diverge to form the north downs of Surrey 
or the south downs of Sussex. At the extremities 
of these lines of heights the upland broadens out into 
spaces which were seized on from the earliest times 
for human settlement. The downs of our Hamp- 
shire formed a "gwent," or open clearing, whose 
name still lingers in its " Gwentceaster," or Winches- 
ter ; while the upland which became the later home 
of the North-folk and South-folk formed another and a 
broader " gwent " which gave its name to the Gwenta 
of the Iceni, the predecessor of our Norwich. The 
north downs, as they neared the sea, widened out, in 
their turn, into a third upland that still preserves its 
name of the Caint or Kent, and whose broad front 
ran from the cliffs of Thanet to those of Dover and 
Folkestone. Free spaces of the same character were 
found on the Cotswolds or on the wolds of Lincoln 
and York ; and in all we find traces of early culture 
and of the presence of a population which has passed 
away as tillage was drawn to richer soils. 



IO THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. The transfer of culture and population, indeed, 
Britain had begun before the conquest of Claudius ; ' and 
a Foes! S the position of many Roman towns shows how busily 
ThTZaste ^ was can "i e d on through the centuries of Roman 
andfen. ru i e# But even at the close of this rule the clear- 
ings along the river valleys were still mere strips of 
culture which threaded their way through a mighty 
waste. To realize the Britain of the Roman age, we 
must set before us the Poland or Northern Russia of 
our own ; a country into whose tracts of forest land 
man is still hewing his way, and where the clearings 
round town or village hardly break the reaches of 
silent moorlands or as silent fens. The wolf roamed 
over the long " desert " that stretched from the 
Cheviots to the Peak. Beavers built in the streams 
of marshy hollows such as that which reached from 
Beverley to Ravenspur. 2 The wild bull wandered 
through forest after forest from Ettrick to H amp- 
stead. 3 Though the Roman engineers won fields 
from Romney Marsh on the Kentish coast, nothing 
broke the solitude of the peat-bogs which stretched 
up the Parrett into the heart of Somersetshire, of the 
swamp which struck into the heart of the island 
along the lower Trent, or of the mightier fen along 
the eastern coast, the Wash, which then ran inland 
up the Witham all but to Lincoln, and up the Nen 
and the Cam as far as Huntingdon and Cambridge. 4 

1 Raine, Historians of the Church of York, Introd. pp. ix. x. 

2 Boyd Dawkins, Cave-hunting, pp. 76, 132. 

3 Even in the twelfth century the forest district north of London 
was full of wild boars and wild oxen, " latebra? . . . aprorum et tau- 
rorum sylvestrium." FitzStephen's " Life of Becket," in Giles, St. 
Thorn. Cant. i. 173. 

* Pearson, Historical Maps of England, p. 3. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. U 

But neither moor nor fen covered so vast a space introd. 
of Britain as its woods. 1 The wedge of forest and Britain 
scrub that filled the hollow between the north and ^oeT 
south downs stretched in an unbroken mass for a ^ 
hundred and twenty miles, from Hampshire to the woodland. 
valley* of the Medway ; but, huge as it was, this " An- 
dredsweald " w r as hardly greater than other of the 
woodlands which covered Britain. A line of thick- 
ets along the shore of the Southampton Water link- 
ed it with as large a forest tract to the west, a frag- 
ment of which survives in our New Forest, but which 
then bent away through the present Dorsetshire and 
spread northward round the western edge of the 
Wiltshire Downs to the valley of the Frome. The 
line of the Severn was blocked above Worcester by 
the forest of Wyre, which extended northward to 
Cheshire ; while the Avon skirted the border of a 
mighty woodland, of which Shakspere's Arden be- 
came the dwindled representative, and which all but 
covered the area of the present Warwickshire. Away 
to the east the rises of Highgate and Hampstead 
formed the southern edge of a forest tract that 
stretched without a break, to the Wash, and thus al- 
most touched the belt of woodland which ran athwart 
Mid-Britain in the forests of Rockingham and Charn- 
wood, and in the Brunewald of the Lincoln heights. 
The northern part of the province was yet wilder and 
more inaccessible than the part to the south; for 
while Sherwood and Needwood filled the space be- 

1 See Guest, Early English Settlements in Britain (Salisbury vol- 
ume of Proceedings of Archaeological Institute), pp. 31, 32. I shall 
deal more at large with these swamps and woodlands as we meet 
them in our story. 



I2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. tvveen the Peak and the Trent, the Vale of York 

Britain was pressed between the moorlands of Pickering and 

a Foes. S the waste or " desert " that stretched from the Peak 

of Derbyshire to the Roman wall; and beyond the 

wall to the Forth the country was little more than 

a vast wilderness of moorland and woodland which 

later times knew as the forest of Selkirk. 

Divisions j\ s we follow its invaders step by step across Brit- 

among . in i • -i i r 

proyin- am, we shall see how wide these forests were, and 
what hindrances they threw in the way of its assail- 
ants. But they must have thrown almost as great 
hindrances in the way of its civilization. The cities 
of the province, indeed, were thoroughly Romanized. 
Within the walls of towns such as Lincoln or York, 
towns governed by their own municipal officers, 
guarded by massive walls, and linked together by the 
net-work of roads which reached from one end of the 
island to the other, law, language, political and so- 
cial life, all were of Rome. But if the towns were 
thoroughly Romanized, it seems doubtful, from the 
few facts that remain to us, whether Roman civiliza- 
tion had made much impression on the bulk of the 
provincials, or whether the serf- like husbandmen 
whose cabins clustered round the luxurious villas of 
the provincial landowners, or the yet more servile 
miners of Northumbria and the forest of Dean, 
were touched by the arts and knowledge of their 
masters. The use of the Roman language may be 
roughly taken as marking the progress of the Roman 
civilization ; and though Latin had all but wholly 
superseded the languages of the conquered peoples 
in Spain and Gaul, its use was probably limited in 
Britain to the townsfolk and to the wealthier pro- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ! 3 

prietors without the towns. Over large tracts of introd. 
country the rural Britons seemed to have remained Britain 
apart from their conquerors, not only speaking their a F 0e s! S 
own language, and owning some traditional allegi- 
ance to their native chiefs, but retaining their native 
system of law. Imperial edicts had long since ex- 
tended Roman citizenship to every dweller within 
the Empire ; but the wilder provincials may have 
been suffered to retain, in some measure, their own 
usages, as the Zulu or the Maori is suffered to re- 
tain them, though subject in theory to British law, 
and entitled to the full privileges of British subjects. 
The Welsh laws which we possess in a later shape 
are undoubtedly, in the main, the same system of 
early customs which Rome found existing among 
the Britons in the days of Claudius and Caesar; 1 and 
the fact that they remained a living law when her 
legions withdrew proves their continuance through- 
out the four hundred years of her rule, as it proves 
the practical isolation from Roman life and Roman 
civilization of the native communities which pre- 
served them. 

The dangers that sprang from such a severance inroads of 
between the two elements of its population must 
have been stirred into active life by the danger which 
threatened Britain from the north. No Roman ruler 
had succeeded in reducing the districts beyond the 
firths ; and the Britons who had been sheltered from 
the Roman sword by the fastnesses of the Highlands 
were strong enough from the opening of the second 
century to turn fiercely on their opponents. The 

1 Sir H. Maine, Early History of Institutions, p. 6. 



I4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. wall which the Emperor Hadrian drew across the 
Britain moors from Newcastle to Carlisle marks the first 
a Foes! S stage in a struggle with these Caledonians or Picts 
which lasted to the close of the Roman rule. But 
even without such a barrier the disciplined soldiers 
of the Empire could easily have held at bay enemies 
such as these: and when we find the Picts pene- 
trating in the midst of the fourth century into the 
heart of Britain, it can hardly have been without the 
aid of disaffection within the province itself. For 
such disaffection the same causes must have existed 
in Britain as we know to have existed in Gaul. The 
purely despotic system of the Roman government 
crushed all local vigor by crushing local indepen- 
dence : and here, as elsewhere, population was, no 
doubt, declining as the area of slave-culture widened 
with the sinking of the laborer into a serf. If the 
mines were worked by forced labor, they would have 
been a source of endless oppression ; while town and 
country alike were drained by heavy taxation, and in- 
. dustry fettered by laws that turned every trade into an 
hereditary caste. But the disaffection which backed 
the Pictish invader found a firmer groundwork in 
Britain than in other imperial districts which suffer- 
ed from the same misrule. Once within the prov- 
ince, the Picts would meet kindred of their own, who, 
though conquered, were hardly more Romanized than 
themselves, and whom a jealousy of the Romanized 
townsfolk might easily rouse to arms. That such a 
division between its inhabitants broke the strength 
of Britain at a later time is nearly certain ; that it 
had begun in the middle of the fourth century is 
probable from the character of the Pictish inroad 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



15 



Saxons. 



which all but tore Britain from the Empire in the introd. 
reign of Valentinian. The inroad was met by his . Britain 
general, Theodosius, and the Picts driven back to a F es. 3 
their mountains; but Theodosius had found South- 
ern Britain itself in possession of the invaders, 1 
Raids so extensive as this could hardly have been 
effected without aid from within ; and the social con- 
dition of the island was such that help from within 
may have been largely given. 

The Picts, however, were far from being the only The 
enemies who were drawn at this moment to the plun- 
der of the province. While their clans surged against 
the Roman wall, the coasts of Britain were being har- 
ried by marauders from the sea. The boats of Irish 
pirates — or, as they were then called, Scots — ravaged 
its western shores, while a yet more formidable race 
of freebooters pillaged from Portsmouth to the Wash. 
In their homeland between the Elbe and the Ems, 
as well as in a wide tract across the Ems to the 
Rhine, a number of German tribes had drawn to- 
gether into the people of the Saxons, and it was to 
this people that the pirates of the Channel belonged. 2 
Chance has preserved for us in a Sleswick peat-bog 
one of the war keels of these early seamen. The 
boat is flat-bottomed, seventy feet long, and eight or 
nine feet wide, its sides of oak boards fastened with 
bark ropes and iron bolts. Fifty oars drove it over 
the waves with a freight of warriors whose arms — 
axes, swords, lances, and knives — were found heaped 

1 Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxvii. cc. 8, 9 (Monum. Hist. Brit, 
p. Ixxiii.). 

2 Their first recorded appearance off the coast of Gaul is in A.D, 
287. Eutropius, ix. 21 (Monum. Hist, Brit. p. Ixxii.). 



piracy. 



j£ THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. together in its hold. 1 Like the galleys of the Middle 
Britain Ages, such boats could only creep cautiously along 
a roes! S from harbor to harbor in rough weather; but in 
smooth water their swiftness fitted them admirably 
for the piracy by which the men of these tribes were 
already making themselves dreaded. Its flat bottom 
enabled them to beach the vessel on any fitting coast ; 
and a step on shore at once transformed the boatmen 
into a war band. 
■Their A letter which a Roman provincial, Sidonius Apol- 
linaris, wrote in warning to a friend who had em- 
barked as an officer in the Channel fleet, which was 
"looking out for the pirate-boats of the Saxons," 
gives us a glimpse of these freebooters as they ap- 
peared to the civilized world of the fifth century. 
"When 2 you see their rowers," says Sidonius, "you 
may make up your mind that every one of them is an 
arch-pirate, with such wonderful unanimity do all of 
them at once command, obey, teach, and learn their 
business of brigandage. This is why I have to warn 
you to be more than ever on your guard in this war- 
fare. Your foe is of all foes the fiercest. 3 He at- 
tacks unexpectedly ; if you expect him, he makes his 
escape; he despises those who seek to block his 
path ; he overthrows those who are off their guard ; 
he cuts off any enemy whom he follows ; while, for 
himself, he never fails to escape when he is forced to 
fly. And, more than this, to these men a shipwreck 
is a school of seamanship rather than a matter of 

1 Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 8, 9. 

2 Sidon. Apollin. Epist. viii. 6 (Migne, Patrologia, vol. lviii. col. 

597). 

3 " Hostis est omni hoste truculentior." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



17 



dread. They know the dangers of the deep like men introd. 
who are every day in contact with them. For since Britain 
a storm throws those whom they wish to attack off a F 0e s. S 
their guard, while it hinders their own coming onset 
from being seen from afar, they gladly risk them- 
selves in the midst of wrecks and sea-beaten rocks 
in the hope of making profit out of the very tem- 
pest." : 

The picture is one of men who were not merely T ! ldr 

J slave- 

greedy freebooters, but finished seamen, and who hunting. 
had learned. " barbarians " as they were, how to com- 
mand and how to obey in their school of war. But 
it was not the daring or the pillage of the Saxons 
that spread terror along the Channel so much as 
their cruelty. It was by this that the Roman pro- 
vincials distinguished them 2 from the rest of the 
German races who were attacking the Empire ; for 
while men noted in the Frank his want of faith, in 
the Alan his greed, in the Hun his shamelessness, 
in the Gepid an utter absence of any trace of civil- 
ization, what they noted in the Saxon was his savage 
cruelty. It was this ruthlessness that made their 
descents on the coast of the Channel so terrible to 
the provincials. The main aim of these pirate raids, 
as of the pirate raids from the north, hundreds of 
years later, was man-hunting — the carrying-off of 

1 Cf. Sidon. Apollin. Carm. vii. (Monum. Hist. Brit. p. c.) : 

" Quin et Aremoricus piratam Saxona tractus 
Sperabat, cui pelle salum sulcare Britannum 
Ludus, et assuto glaucum mare findere lembo." 

2 Salvian, De Gubernatione Dei, iv. 14: "Gens Saxonum fera est, 
Francorum infidelis, Gepidarum inhumana, Chunorum impudica," 
etc. 



jg THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. men, women, and children into slavery. But the 
Britain slave-hunting of the Saxons had features of peculiar 
a Foes. S horror. " Before they raise anchor and set sail from 
the hostile continent for their own homeland, their 
wont when they are on the eve of returning is to 
slay by long and painful tortures one man in every 
ten of those they have taken, in compliance with a 
religious use which is even more lamentable than 
superstitious ; and for this purpose to gather the 
whole crowd of doomed men together, and temper the 
injustice of their fate by the mock justice of casting 
lots for the victims. Though such a rite is not so 
much a sacrifice that cleanses as a sacrilege that de- 
files them, the doers of this deed of blood deem it a 
part of their religion rather to torture their captives 
than to take ransom for them." 1 
Saxons From the close of the third century the raids of 
channel, these Saxons had been felt along the coasts of Gaul, 
and a fleet which appears from this time in the 
Channel must have been manned to resist them. It 
is not, however, till the year 364 2 that we hear of 

1 " Mos est remeaturis decimum quemque captorum {caproriun 
Migne) per sequales et cruciarias pcenas, plus ob hoc tristi quam 
superstitioso ritu, necare ; superque collectam turbam periturorum, 
mortis iniquitatem sortis sequitate dispergere. Talibus eligunt vo- 
tis, victimis solvunt; et per hujusmodi non tam sacrificia purgati 
quam sacrilegia polluti, religiosum putant csedis infaustae perpetra- 
tores de capite captivo magis exigere tormenta quam pretia." 

1 have ventured to base my version of this letter on a spirited 
though free translation given by Mr. Hodgkin, in Italy and her In- 
vaders, vol. ii. p. 365. The "cruciarias pcenas," which Mr. Hodgkin 
renders "crucifixion," are more probably something like the " spread- 
eagle " of the later Northmen. 

2 " Cum (Carausius) per tractum Belgicae et Armoricae pacandum 
mare accepisset quod Franci et Saxones infestabant." Eutrop. 
(Monum. Hist. Brit. p. lxxii.) ; Ammianus Marcellinus, lib. xxvi. c. 4. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



19 



them as joining in any attack upon Britain itself; introd. 
but from this moment their ravages seem to have Britain 
been ceaselessly carried on, and their presence off a £ es* s 
its shores became one among the pressing difficulties 
which the country had to meet. For the road be- 
tween Britain and Rome lay across the Channel; 
and the occupation of the waters or coasts of the 
Channel by a pirate fleet was not only fatal to the 
trade of the province with the European mainland, 
but threatened its connection with the central gov- 
ernment, and cut it off from the body of the Empire. 
It is to the years, therefore, that followed this joint 
attack of Saxon and Pict that we must look for the 
date of two measures which mark what we may term 
a change of front in the military administration of 
Britain. It was probably now that her greater towns 
strengthened themselves with walls — a change which 
implied dread of an attack from which the Roman 
troops might be unable to defend them ; while the 
pressure of the Saxons, as well as the district on 
which it told, is marked by the organization of the 
coast from the Wash to Southampton Water under 
an officer who bore the title of " Count of the Mari- 
time Tract," or " of the Saxon Shore." 1 

" Hoc tempore . . . Picti Saxonesque et Scoti et Attacotti Britannos 
Eerumnis vexavere continuis " (Monum. Hist. Brit. p. lxxiii.). 

1 In the full description of his office and troops (" Notitia utri- 
usque Imperii," Monum. Hist. Brit. p. xxiv.) the style of this officer 
is " Comes Limitis Saxonici per Britanniam." Elsewhere (ibid. p. 
xxiii.) he is informally " Comes Littoris Saxonici per Britannias." 
The arguments of Lappenberg (Anglo-Saxon Kings, ed. 1881, i. 57, 
58), Kemble (Saxons in England, i. 10, 11, 14), and others for an 
earlier date for this shore, as well as for the derivation of the name 
from a Saxon settlement along it rather than its use as a barrier 
against Saxon descents, though still maintained by Mr. Skene (.Cel- 



. 20 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. It was here that Britain lay most open to the 
Britain pirates' forays. Unguarded by the cliffs and bleak 
a Foes! S moorlands that ran northward along the coast from 
ThTsaxon^^ Humber to the Tweed, or by forests such as 
shore, lined the shore from Portsmouth to the west, the 
tract which was known as the Saxon Shore present- 
ed along its whole line natural features that invited 
and favored attack. Its sea-brim was fringed with 
marshy islands or low tracts of alluvial soil which 
offered secure points of landing or anchorage, and 
broken by large estuaries whose waters gave access 
to the country behind them ; while from these lower 
parts the land rose within into downs and uplands 
which were at once easy to overrun and favorable 
for settlement. But the measures of defence which 
were now taken more than compensated for the nat- 
ural weakness of the island in this quarter. The 
coast was lined with strong fortresses. 1 At Bran- 
caster in Norfolk the northernmost of these watched 
the inlet of the Wash and guarded the East-Anglian 
Downs. In our Suffolk a stronghold now known as 
Burgh Castle blocked the estuary of the Yare, as the 
walls of Colchester barred the inlet of the Stoui\, 
Othona, a fortress at the mouth of the Blackwater, 

tic Scotland, vol. i. p. 151), have been satisfactorily refuted by Dr. 
Guest (E. E. Sett. p. 33 et seq), whose judgment is adopted by Mr. 
Freeman (Norm. Conq. i. 11, note), and by Professor Stubbs (Constit. 
Hist. i. 67, note). The Notitia Imperii, in which alone the term is 
found, was drawn up about a.d. 400 ; possibly in 403. (Hodgson 
Hinde, Hist, of Northumberland, i. pt. 1, pp. 18, 19.) 

1 The list is given in the Notitia Imperii (Monum. Hist. Brit, 
p. xxiv), with the disposition of the troops in each fortress. Lon- 
don and the towns at Canterbury and Rochester, though backing 
this line of defence, were not subject to the Count of the Saxon 
Shore. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2I 

protected the southern flats of our Essex ; while introd. 
London forbade all passage up the Thames. Kent Britain 
was the most vital point of all, for through it passed F es. S 
the line of communication between Britain and 
Rome; and a group of fortresses, admirably dis- 
posed, protected this passage. One guarded Rich- 
borough, which was the common port for all traffic 
from Gaul ; a second at Reculver held the entrance 
of the sea-channel which then parted Thanet from 
the mainland, and through which vessels passed to 
London by the estuary of the Thames ; while walled 
towns on the site of our Canterbury and of our Roch- 
ester protected the points at which the road from 
Richborough to London passed the Stour and the 
Medway. 1 Three other fortresses held the coast of 
the Channel as far as the great woods which hin- 
dered all landing to the west. Lymne guarded the 
lowlands of Kent and the reclaimed tracts of Romney 
Marsh ; Anderida, the modern Pevensey, held our 
Sussex ; while Porchester marks the site of a castle 
which looked over the Southampton Water and 
blocked the road to the downs. 

Garrisoned as they were by a force of at least ten withdraw- 
thousand men, the legion placed at the command of mans from 
the Count of the Saxon Shore, these fortresses were Britam - 
too strong a barrier for the pirates to break ; and we 
may set aside the theories which, in ignorance of the 
military strength of the Empire and of its hold over 
the provinces, suppose them to have conquered and 
settled here for centuries before the close of the Ro- 

1 The Notitia stations troops at Dover ; but it is doubtful wheth- 
er there was any Roman fortress there. Clark, " Dover Castle," 
Archaeol. Journ. vol. xxxii. p. 440. 



22 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. man rule. Up to the moment, indeed, when the Im- 
Britain perial troops quitted Britain, we see them able easily 
a Foes. S to repel the attacks of its barbarous assailants. When 
a renewal of their inroads left Britain weak and ex- 
hausted at the accession of the Emperor Honorius, 
the Roman general Stilicho renewed the triumphs 
which Theodosius had won. 1 The Pict was driven 
back afresh, the Saxon boats chased by his galleys 
as far as the Orkneys, and the Saxon Shore prob- 
ably strengthened with fresh fortresses. But the 
campaign of Stilicho was the last triumph of the 
Empire in its Western waters. The struggle Rome 
had waged so long drew, in fact, to its end. At the 
opening of the fifth century her resistance suddenly 
broke down ; and the savage mass of barbarism with 
which she had battled broke in upon the Empire at 
a time when its force was sapped by internal decay. 
In its western dominions, where the German peoples 
were its foes, the triumph of its enemies was com- 
plete. The Franks conquered and colonized Gaul. 
The West Goths conquered and colonized Spain. 
The Vandals founded a kingdom in Africa. The 
Burgundians encamped in the border-land between 
Italy and the Rhone. The East Goths ruled at last 
in Italy itself. And now that the fated hour was 
come, the Saxons too closed upon their prey. The 
condition of the province invited their attack, for the 
strength of the Empire, broken everywhere by mili- 
tary revolts, was nowhere more broken than in Brit- 

1 Claudian, De Tert. Consul. Honorii, ap. Monum. Hist. Brit. p. xcviii. 

" Maduerunt Saxone fuso 
Orcades ; incaluit Pictorum sanguine Thule ; 
Scotorum cumulos flevit glacialis Ierne." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 23 

ain, where the two legions which remained quartered INTR0D - 
at Richborough and York set up more than once Britain 
their chiefs as emperors, and followed them across Foes, 
the Channel in a march upon Rome. The last of 
these pretenders, Constantine, crossed over to Gaul 
in 407 with the bulk of the soldiers quartered in 
Britain, and the province seems to have been left to 
its own defence ; for it was no longer the legionaries, 
but " the people of Britain," who, " taking up arms," 
repulsed a new onset of the barbarians. As the 
Empire was organized, such a rising in arms was a 
defiance of its laws and a practical overthrow of the 
whole system of government ; and it was naturally 
followed by the expulsion of Constantine's officials 
and the creation of a civil administration on the 
part of the provincials. Independent, however, as 
they found themselves, they had no wish to break 
away from Rome. Their rising had been against a 
usurper: and they appealed to Honorius to accept 
their obedience and replace the troops. But the 
legions of the Empire were needed to guard Rome 
itself; and in 410 a letter of the Emperor bade Brit- 
ain provide for its own government and its own de- 
fence. 1 

Few statements are more false than those which The Brit- 
picture the British provincials as cowards, or their" 
struggle against the barbarian as a weak and un- 
worthy one. Nowhere, in fact, through the whole 
circuit of the Roman world, was so long and so des- 
perate a resistance offered to the assailants of the 
Empire. Unaided as she was left, Britain held brave- 

1 Zosimus, lib. vi. c. 10, ap. Monum. Hist. Brit. p. lxxix. 



2 A THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

introd. ]y out as soon as her first panic was over; and for 
Britain some thirty years after the withdrawal of the legions 
a Foes! S the free province maintained an equal struggle 
against her foes. 1 Of these she probably counted 
the Saxons as still the least formidable. The free- 
booters from Ireland were not only scourging her 
western coast, but planting colonies at points along 
its line. To the north of the Firth of Clyde these 
" Scots " settled about this time in the peninsula of 
Argyle. To the south of it they may have been the 
Gael who mastered and gave their name to Gallo- 
way ; and there are some indications that a larger 
though a less permanent settlement was being made 
in the present North Wales. The Pict was an even 
more pressing danger. If he made no settlements, 
his raids grew fiercer and fiercer; and though once 
at least a general rising of despair drove him back 
from the very heart of the country, 2 as the fifth cen- 
tury wore on Britain was torn with a civil strife 
which made united resistance impossible. Its fort- 
unes, indeed, at this time have reached us only in 
late and questionable traditions ; 3 but there is much 

1 Later tradition attributed the Wall and the castles of the Saxon 
Shore to this time. Gildas (ed. Stevenson), Hist. sec. 18. 

2 Gildas (Hist. c. 20) makes a fruitless appeal to the Empire pre- 
ceding this rally. As the letter is to " Agitio ter consuli," and ^tius 
was consul for the third time in 446, it cannot have been earlier 
than this date. (Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 43.) For the political struggles, 
see Guest, ibid. 49, 50. 

3 Our only British informants for this period, as for the conquest 
that followed it, are Gildas (Historia and Epistola — really a single 
work ; cf. Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, i. 44) and Nennius (Hist. 
Britonum). Both are edited by Stevenson, and the first may be 
found in Monum. Hist. Brit. The genuineness of Gildas, which has 
been doubted, may now be looked on as established (see Stubbs and 
Haddan, Councils of Britain, i. 44). Skene (Celtic Scotland, i. 116, 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



25 



to confirm the main outline of the story which these introd. 
traditions preserve. City and country, Roman part Britain 
and native part, may well have risen in arms against F es. 
one another ; and under a leader of native blood the 
latter seem to have been successful over their Ro- 
manized opponents. But even this failed to unite 
the province when the Pict poured afresh over the 
Roman wall, and the boats of the Irish and English 
marauders appeared again off its coasts. The one 
course which seemed left was to imitate the fatal 
policy by which Rome had invited its doom while 
striving to avert it — the policy of matching barbarian 
against barbarian. 1 It was with this view that Brit- 
ain turned to what seemed the weakest of her assail- 
ants, and strove to find among the freebooters who 
were harrying her eastern coast troops whom she 
could use as mercenaries against the Pict. 

note) gives a critical account of the various biographies of Gildas. 
He seems to have been born in 516, probably in the North-Welsh 
valley of the Clwyd ; to have left Britain for Armorica when thirty 
years old, or in 546 ; to have written his History there about 556 or 
560 ; to have crossed to Ireland between 566 and 569 ; and to have 
died there in 570. For the nature and date of the compilation 
which bears the name of Nennius, see Guest, Early English Settle- 
ments, p. 36, and Stevenson's introduction to his edition of him. In 
its earliest form, it is probably of the seventh century. Little, how- 
ever, is to be gleaned from the confused rhetoric of Gildas ; and it 
is only here and there that we can use the earlier facts which seem 
to be embedded among the later legends of Nennius. 
1 Gildas, Hist. cc. 22, 23. 



2 5 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



CHAPTER I. 

THE CONQUEST OF THE SAXON SHORE. 

449-r. 500. 

Landing In the year 449 or 450 1 a band of warriors was 

juta. drawn to the shores of Britain by the usual pledges 

of land and pay. The warriors were Jutes, men of 

1 With Mr. Freeman and Mr. Stubbs, I accept the argument of 
Dr. Guest (Early English Settlements in South Britain, p. 43, etc.) 
as conclusive in favor of the date 449 or 450 for this first settlement 
of the invaders. The date really rests on the authority of Gildas 
and of Bseda. The first places the coming of the strangers after 
the letter in which the Britons sought help from ^Etius in his third 
consulship, i. e. in 446. Bseda, who generally follows Gildas in his 
story, fixes it in the reign of Marcian, which he believed to begin 
in 449, and which in his English Chronicle he had begun in 452, 
but which really began in 450 and ended in 457. Bseda's words 
(Hist. Eccl. lib. i. c. 15) simply place the landing in Marcian's reign ; 
but they were generally read as assigning it to the first year of his 
reign, and hence the English Chronicle, followed by later writers, 
assigned it to 449. The work of Nennius gives three other dates. 
One passage, added in the ninth century, and therefore of little 
weight, assigns it to 392. Another places it in 428. But the only 
important statement is one which Mr. Skene attributes to the work 
" as originally compiled in the seventh century," and which runs, 
" Regnante Gratiano secundo Equantio Romse Saxones a Guorthi- 
gerno suscepti sunt anno {quadrvigentesz'mo, Stev. ) trecentesimo 
quadragesimo septimo post passionem Christi" (Nennius, ed. Ste- 
venson, c. 31). This would be 374, when Gratian was consul with 
Equitius ; and probably arose from a confusion of the great inroad 
of the Saxons which occupied Theodosius in the first and second 
years of Gratian's rule, with their permanent landing in Britain. 
The arguments for these earlier dates have been recently restated 
in Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 146 et seq. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



27 



a tribe which has left its name to Jutland, at the chap.i. 
extremity of the peninsula that projects from the Thecon- 
shores of North Germany, but who were probably t 2e Saxon 
akin to the race that was fringing the opposite coast shore - 
of Scandinavia and settling in the Danish isles. In 44 9-c-500. 
three " keels " — so ran the legend of their conquest 
— and with their ealdormen, Hengest and Horsa, 
at their head, these Jutes landed at Ebbsfleet 1 in the 
Isle of Thanet. 

With the landing of Hengest and his war band 
English history begins. 2 We have no longer to 



1 " Eopwine's fleot," English Chronicle, a. 449. The older name 
for Thanet, Ruim, is preserved in the local name Ramsgate. 

2 The story of the English conquest, as a whole, rests on the au- 
thority of the English Chronicle, as to the general composition and 
value of which I shall speak more largely later on. The annals 
from 449 to the end of the English conquest — with which we are 
here concerned — were probably embodied in the Chronicle in the 
middle of the ninth century. "They represent," says Mr. Earle, 
"the gleanings and reconstruction of the half-lost early history of 
Wessex at the time of the first compilation in 855. Embodying 
antiquities of a high type, this section is not the oldest composition 
preserved in this Chronicle. It is such history as could still be made 
out of oral traditions, and it probably represents the collected in- 
formation of the bardic memory, aided by the runic stones and the 
roll of kings" (Earle, Two Parallel Chronicles, Introduction, p. ix.). 
Into some of these early entries a mythical element certainly enters 
(as in the names of Port and Wightgar, eponyms of Portsmouth 
and Wightgaraburh or Carisbrook), and we may perhaps detect 
traces of " an artificial chronology in which eight and four are prev- 
alent factors " (Earle, Par. Chron. Intr. p. ix. ; see, however, on this 
matter, Guest, E. E. Sett., Salisbury vol. of Archaeol. Institute, p. 38 
et seq.) ; but there is no real ground for the general scepticism as to 
the whole run of dates and facts expressed by writers such as Lap- 
penberg (Angl. Sax. [1881] i. 97 et seq). See Stubbs (Constit. Hist, 
i. 46) and Guest (E. E. Sett. pp. 38-42, etc.), whose conclusions are 
accepted by Mr. Freeman (Norm. Conq. i. 9, note). The later Eng- 
lish accounts of this period, such as those of Asser, Ethelward, or 
Florence, are all based on the Chronicle. 



2 8 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. wa tch the upgrowth of Roman life in a soil from 
The con- which Roman life has been swept away, or to ques- 
tne saxon tion the dim records of a vanished past in the vain 
shore, j^pg f reC alling the life that our fathers lived in 
449-C.50Q. their homeland by the Baltic. From the hour when 
they set foot on the sands of Thanet we follow the 
story of Englishmen in the land they made their 
own. There is little to catch the eye in Ebbsfleet 
itself, a mere lift of ground with a few gray cottages 
dotted over it, cut off nowadays from the sea by a 
reclaimed meadow and a sea-wall. Taken as a whole, 
indeed, the scene has a wild beauty of its own. To 
the ri^ht the white curve of Rams^ate cliffs looks 
down on the crescent of Pegwell Bay ; while far away 
to the left across gray marsh-levels, where tiny smoke- 
wreaths mark the sites of Richborough and Sand- 
wich, the coast-line bends dimly to the fresh rise of 
cliffs beyond Deal. But a higher sense than that of 
beauty draws us to the landing-place of our fathers. 
No spot in Britain can be so sacred to Englishmen 
as that which first felt the tread of English feet. 
Everything in the character of the ground confirms 
the tradition which fixes this spot at Ebbsfleet ; for, 
great as the physical changes of the country have 
been since the fifth century, they have told little on 
its main features. At the time of Hengest's landing 
a broad inlet of sea parted Thanet from the main- 
land of Britain ; for the marshes which stretch from 
Reculver to Sandwich were then, as they remained 
for centuries, 1 a wide sea-channel, hardly less than 

1 In Bseda's day this channel was about three furlongs wide (Bseda, 
Hist. Eccl. lib. i. c. 25). The tolls of the ferry over it at Sarre were 
still valuable in Edward the Third's days ; and it was not till the 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 Q 

a mile across, through which vessels from Gaul chap. i. 
commonly made their way into the estuary of the The con- 
Thames. The mouth of this inlet was narrowed by the^axon 
two sand-spits, now lost in the general level of the Shore - 
soil, but which at that time jutted out from either 4£9-c.50Q. 
shore into the waves. On the southern spit stands 
the present town of Sandwich, while the northern is 
still known by the name of Ebbsfleet. If the war- 
ships of the pirates, therefore, were cruising off the 
coast at the moment when the bargain which gave 
them' Thanet was struck, their disembarkation at 
Ebbsfleet, where they first touched its soil, was nat- 
ural enough. The choice of the spot suggests, too, 
that their landing was a peaceful one. Richbor- 
ough, a fortress whose broken ramparts rise hard by 
above the gray flats of Minster Marsh, and which 
was then the common landing-place of travellers 
from Gaul, was too important a spot to have been 
left without a British garrison. Even if it had ceased 
to be the station of the fleet that guarded the Chan- 
nel, it still commanded the road which ran through 
Kent to London ; and some force must have re- 
placed the legionary troops that held it when it was 
the headquarters of the Count of the Saxon Shore. 
That no record remains of any encounter with these 
troops at Richborough may well have been because 
the Jutes who landed under Hengest landed not as 
enemies, but as allies. 

The after-course of events, indeed, seems to show The jntes 
that the choice of this landing-place was the result 

time of Henry the Seventh that the gradual silting-up of the inlet 
forced Kent to replace the ferry by a bridge and road at this point 
(Archaeol. Cantiana, vol. v. p. 306). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. i. of a settled design. 1 



Between the Briton and his 
The con- hireling soldiers there could be little trust. Quar- 
thesaxon ters m Thanet would satisfy the followers of Hen- 
shore. gest, 2 who thus lay encamped within sight of their 
449-c. 500. fellow -pirates in the Channel, and who felt them- 
selves secured against the treachery which had often 




"■-" r^j d^o* ?&*«•»£- %j»t«. J ^^FolL^stone 

a°-i°&^ ^v- v ° P °, RTUS lew mm is 







DURQVERNUM. English CAHTVTJIR A BYRIG. Modern Canterbury. 
English Miles, 



Stanford's neorrrrtphiml Fstab ■ 



proved fatal to the Germans whom Rome called to 
her aid by the broad inlet that parted their camp 
from the mainland. But the choice was no less 



1 We are thrown here wholly on Gildas, sec. 23. 

2 Solinus speaks of Thanet as fruitful in cornfields (Monum. 
Hist. Brit. p. x.). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 1 

satisfactory to the provincial himself, trembling — chap. r. 
and, as the event proved, justly trembling — lest in Thecon- 
his zeal against the Pict he had brought an even tietexon 
fiercer foe into Britain. For his dangerous allies shore - 
were cooped in a corner of the land, and parted 449 ~ c - 50 °- 
from the bulk of Britain by a sea -channel which 
was guarded by the strongest fortresses of the coast. 
The need of such precautions was seen in the dis- 
putes which arose as soon as the work for which 
the mercenaries had been hired was done. In the 
first years that followed after their landing, Jute and 
Briton fought side by side ; and the Picts are said 
to have at last been scattered to the winds in a 
great battle on the eastern coast of Britain. But 
danger from the Pict was hardly over when danger 
came from the Jutes themselves. Their numbers 
probably grew fast as the news of their settlement 
in Thanet spread among their fellow -pirates who 
were haunting the Channel; and with the increase 
of their number must have grown the difficulty of 
supplying them with rations and pay. 

The dispute which rose over these questions was Hmgesfs 
at last closed by Hengest's men with a threat of 
war. But the threat, as we have seen, was no easy 
one to carry out. 1 Right across their path in any 

1 In tracing the English conquest of Kent, as in the conquest of 
Sussex and Wessex, I have been mainly guided by the researches of 
Dr. Guest (Early English Settlements in South Britain, in the Sal- 
isbury vol. of Proceedings of the Archaeological Institute for 1849). 
I cannot, with Mr. Freeman, profess myself "an unreserved follower 
of that illustrious scholar ;" for the advance of linguistic science 
has set aside many of the conclusions he has drawn from Welsh 
philology, while, in his researches into the history of the princes of 
North Wales and Damnonia, he has placed far too great a reliance 
on the documents, many spurious and all tampered with, contained 



3 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. attack upon Britain stretched the inlet of sea that 
The con- parted Thanet from the mainland, a strait which was 
the^axon then traversable only at low water 1 by a long and 
shore. d an g er0 us ford, and guarded at either mouth by for- 
449-c.50o. tresses. The channel of the Medway, with the forest 
of the Weald bending round from it to the south, 
furnished a second line of defence for our West 
Kent and Sussex ; while the strongholds of Dover 
and Lymne guarded their portion of the Saxon 
Shore. Great, however, as these difficulties were, 
they failed to check the onset of the Jutes. From 
the spot at which the conflict between Hengest and 
the Britons took place in 455/ we may gather that 
his attack was a sudden one, and that the success of 
the invaders was due mainly to a surprise. The in- 
let may have been crossed before any force could be 
collected to oppose the English onset, or the boats 
of the Jutes may have pushed from the centre of it 
up the channel of its tributary, the Stour, itself at 
that time a wide and navigable estuary, to the town 
that stood on the site of our Canterbury, the town 
of Durovernum. Durovernum had grown up among 



in the Book of Llandaff. (For the real character of these docu- 
ments, see Mr. Haddan's note in Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, vol. 
i. p. 147.) But when these deductions are made, they do little to 
lessen the debt which our early history owes to Dr. Guest. By his 
combination of archaeological research and knowledge of the ground, 
with an exact study of the meagre documentary evidence, he has 
not only restored, so far as they can be restored, many pages of a 
lost chapter of our history — that of the conquest of Britain — but he 
has furnished a method for after-inquirers, of which I have striven, 
however imperfectly, to avail myself in the pages that follow. 

1 Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 53, note. By Bseda's day this inlet was known 
to Englishmen as the Wantsum. 

2 E. Chron. a. 455. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ,- 

the marshes of the Stour, a little cluster of houses chap. i. 
raised above the morass on a foundation of piles. The con- 
But small as the town was, it stood at a point where tKaxon 
the roads from Richborough, Dover, and Reculver shore - 
united to pass by a ford traversable at low water on 44 9-c.5oo. 
their way to London ; and the military importance 
of its position was marked by the rough oval of 
massive walls which lay about it. The strength of 
the place was doubled by the broad river channel 
that guarded it on the northwest and the marshy 
ground which stretched along its northeastern side. 
In this quarter a Christian church had risen on a site 
destined to be occupied in after-days by the mother- 
church of all England ; while another church, that 
was to be hardly less memorable in our religious 
annals, lay without the walls of the town on the 
road to Richborough. 1 But neither wall nor marshes 
saved Durovernum from Hengest's onset, and the 
town was left in blackened and solitary ruin as the 
invaders pushed along the road to London. 

No obstacle seems to have checked their march Battle of 
from the Stour to the Medway. Passing over the ■ yieso< 
heights which were crowned with the forest of 
Blean, they saw the road strike like an arrow past 
the line of Frodsham Creek through a rich and fer- 
tile district, where country-houses and farms clus- 
tered thickly on either side of it, and where the 
burnt grain which is still found among their ruins 
may tell of the smoke-track that marked the Jutish 
advance. 2 As they passed the Swale, however, and 

1 Faussett's " Canterbury till Domesday," Archaeol. Journal, xxxii. 
378 ; and " Roman Cemeteries in Canterbury," Archseol. Cantiaria, 
iv. 27. 2 Murray's Kent, p. 70, of remains at Hartlip. 

3 



34 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. looked to their right over the potteries whose refuse 
The con- still strews the mud-banks of Upchurch, their march 
the saxon seems to have swerved abruptly to the south, 
shore. Whether they were drawn aside by greed of 
449-c. 500. plunder — for the Medway valley was then, as now, 
one of the most fruitful and populous districts of 
the Caint — or whether they were forced by the 
guarded walls of the town which is now our Roch- 
ester ' to turn southward for a ford across the river, 
the march of the Jutes bent at this point along a 
ridge of low hills which forms the bound of the 
river-valley on the east. The country through 
which it led them was full of memories of a past 
which had even then faded from the minds of men ; 
for the hill -slopes which they traversed were the 
grave-ground of a vanished race, and scattered among 
the boulders that strewed the soil rose cromlechs 
and huge barrows of the dead. One mighty relic 
survives in the monument now called Kit's Coty 
House, a cromlech which had been linked in old 
days by an avenue of huge stones to a burial- 
ground some few miles off near the village of Ad- 
dington. It was from a steep knoll on which the 
gray, weather-beaten stones of this monument are 
reared that the view of their first battle-ground 
would break on Hengest's warriors ; and a lane 
which still leads down from it through peaceful home- 
steads would guide them across the river-valley to a 
ford which has left its name in the village of Ayles- 
ford that overhangs it. At this point, which is still 
the lowest ford across the Medway, and where an 

1 See G. T. Clark, " Rochester Castle," Archaeol. Journal, xxxii. 207. 



( JUN ?G 'W J 

THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 35 

ancient trackway crossed the river, 1 the British lead- ch ap- t 
ers must have taken post for the defence of West Thecon- 
Kent ; but the Chronicle of the conquering people 2 tKaxon 
tells nothing of the rush that may have carried the Shore- 
ford, or of the fight that went struggling up through 449-c.500. 
the village. We hear only that Horsa fell in the 
moment of victory ; and the flint heap of Horsted 
which has long preserved his name, and was held in 
after-time to mark his grave, is thus the earliest of 
those monuments of English valor of which West- 
minster is the last and noblest shrine. 3 

The victory of Aylesford was followed by a politi- Repuhe of 
cal change among the assailants, whose loose organ- 
ization around ealdormen was exchanged for a 
stricter union. Aylesford, we are told, 4 was no sooner 
won than " Hengest took to the kingdom, and y^lle, 
his son." The change, no doubt, gave fresh vigor 
to their attack: and the two kings pushed forward 
in 457 from the Med way to the conquest of West 
Kent. Fording the Darent at Dartford, they again 
met the British forces at the passage of the Cray, a 
little stream that falls through a quiet valley from 
the chalk downs hard by at Orpington. Their vic- 
tory must have been complete, for at its close, as the 
Chronicle of their conquerors tells us, the Britons 
" forsook Kent-land and fled with much fear to Lon- 
don." 5 But the ground Hengest had won seems 

1 Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 47. For antiquities of Roman date found 
in this ford, see Archaeol. Cantiana, i. 174. 2 E. Chron. a. 455. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. lib. i. c. 15 ; and Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 48. 

4 E. Chron. a. 455. 

5 E. Chron. a. 457. It is possible that the " pagus" or territory of 
Londinium south of the Thames extended to the Cray, as this was 
the bound of its citizens' right of chase in the Middle Ages. 



36 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. i. soon to have been won back again. If we trust 
The con- British tradition, the battle at Crayford was fol- 
tne saxon lowed by a political revolution in Britain itself, 
shore. -pj ie over throw of the native leader Vortigern may 
449-C.500. h ave proved fatal to his cause ; it would seem, at any 
rate, that the Romanized Britons rose in revolt 
under Aurelius Ambrosianus, a descendant of the 
last Roman general who claimed the purple as an 
emperor in Britain ; and that the success of Aure- 
lius drove his rival to the mountains of the west. 1 
The revolution revived for a while the energy of the 
province. Fresh from his triumph over Vortigern, 
Aurelius marched on the invaders who were turning 
Kent into a desert, and his advance forced the Jutes 
to surrender their conquests and to fall back on 
their stronghold of Thanet. The fortresses of Rich- 
borough and Reculver, at either mouth of the inlet 
which parted Thanet from the mainland, still re- 
mained in British hands, and, basing themselves on 
the former, the troops of Aurelius seem to have suc- 
ceeded for some years in prisoning Hengest in his 
island lair. 2 
Rkhbor- Richborouo:h had lono- served as the headquarters 
of the legion whose business it was to guard the 
Saxon Shore, and its site was one of great military 
strength. 3 The mouth of the Wantsum was nar- 
rowed, as we have seen, by the two jutting sand-spits 
of Ebbsfleet and Sandwich ; but within these the 
estuary widened again into a northern and a south- 
ern bay — the one beneath the slopes of Minster, the 

1 Gildas, Hist. sec. 25 ; Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 50. 

2 Nennius, sec. 43, 44, 45 ; Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 53.. 

3 See map of the district at this time in Archaeol. Cantiana, viii. 14. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



37 



other between Sandwich and the little hamlet of chap, i. 
Fleet. The last bay formed a shallow lagoon, whose The con- 
oyster-beds were famous in the markets of Rome, tho^axon 
and a small rise or islet in the midst of it was s ^ e - 
crowned by the massive walls of Richborough. 449-c.50o. 
The marble buildings within these walls had served, 
no doubt, for the residence of the Count of the Saxon 
Shore. Hard by them stood an amphitheatre for the 
games of the legionaries, and the hill slope was cov- 
ered by a town which the fortress protected. Small 
as was the area of the citadel, its walls were twelve 
feet thick and nearly thirty feet high, and both faces 
and angles were strengthened by bastions of solid 
masonry. 1 Against walls such as these, or those of 
its sister fortress at Reculver, the unskilled efforts 
of the Jutes could do little ; and though no attempt 
seems to have been made to dislodge them from 
Thanet, the British forces remained strong enough 
to prison them for some years within the limits of 
the island. 

In 465, however, the petty conflicts which had'^j^J^ 
gone on along the shores of the Wantsum made Caim. 
way for a decisive struggle. Hengest may have 
been strengthened by reinforcements from his home 
land ; while the losses of Aurelius show that he 
had mustered the whole strength of the island to 
meet the expected onset. But the overthrow of the 
Britons at Wipped's-fleet " was so terrible that all 
hope of preserving the bulk of Kent seems from this 

1 See Roach Smith's Antiquities of Richborough, Reculver, and 
Lymne, for excavations on these sites. 

2 E. Chron. a. 465. "There twelve Wealish ealdormen they 

slew." 



-g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. moment to have been abandoned ; and no further 
The con- struggle disturbed the Jutes in its conquest and set- 
tle &Lon tlement. It was only along its southern shore that 
snore. fl\e Britons now held their ground, and we can hard- 
449-c.5oo.iy doubt it was the reduction of the fortresses in 
this quarter which occupied the later years of Hen- 
gest. 1 Richborough and Reculver must have yield- 
ed at last to his arms ; the beacon-fire which had so 
long guided the Roman galleys along the Channel 
ceased to blaze on the cliffs of Dover; and a final 
victory of the Jutes in 473 may mark the moment 
when they reached the rich pastures which the 
Roman engineers had reclaimed from Romney 
Marsh. A fortress at Lymne, whose broken walls 
look from the slope to which they cling over the 
great flat at their feet, was the key to this district ; 
and with its fall the work of the first conqueror was 
done. In this quarter, at least, the resistance of the 
provincials was utterly broken ; in the last conflict 
the chronicle of the invaders boasts that the Britons 
" fled from the English as from fire." 2 
Landing With this advance to the mouth of the Weald, the 
south work of Hen^est's men came to an end; nor did 
axois. t ^ e j u |- es f rom this time play any important part in 
the attack on the island, for their after-gains were 
limited to the Isle of Wight and a few districts on 
the Southampton Water. Fully, indeed, as the Caint 
was won, no district was less fitted to serve as a 
starting-point in any attack on Britain at large. 
While the Andredsweald, which lay in an impen- 
etrable mass along its western border, extended 

1 Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 54. a E. Chron. a. 473- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



39 



southward behind the swamps of Romney Marsh to chap. i. 
the coast of the Channel, a morass that stretched Thecon- 
from the hills of Dulwich to the banks of the the Saxon 
Thames blocked the narrow strip of open country SIlore - 
between the northern edge of the Weald and the 449 ^_ 500 - 
river. The more tempting water-way along the 




Stanford's Geographical Esiab 1 . 



Thames itself was barred by the walls, if not by the 
fortified bridge, of London. The strength of these 
barriers is proved by the long pause which took 
place in the advance of the Jutes, for a century was 
to pass before they made any effort to penetrate 
further into the island. But their success had called 
a mightier foe to the work of invasion in the free- 



4o THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. booters whose daring and whose ruthlessness were 
The con- being painted at this moment by the pen of Sido- 
the Saxon nius. It was pirates of the Saxon race, with Frisians, 
shore. p er haps, who sailed under their name, 1 whose long 
449-c. sop, pillage of the coast from the Wash to the Solent 
had been preserved in its name of the Saxon Shore. 
It was certain that the conquests of Hengest would 
call these rivals to their prey, and the settlement of 
the Jutes was soon followed by Saxon descents on 
either side of the Caint. 2 We know best their de- 
scent to the westward of it. Beyond Romney 
Marsh along: the Channel the creeks and inlets 
which break the clay flats to the westward of the 
Arun offered easy entrance for the boats of the 
pirates ; and here tradition placed the landing in 477 
of Saxon war bands who followed yElle and his 
three sons, Cymen, Wlencing, and Cissa. The first 
gave his name to the landing-place of the pirates in 
the Selsea peninsula, Cymen's ora or Keynor; while 
the name of the last is said to be preserved in that 
of Chichester, a borough that grew up at a later 
time on the ruins of the little town of Regnum, 
which must have been the earliest object of this at- 
tack. Their raid was a successful one ; and after 
severe losses the Britons of this district fled to the 
Andredsweald. 3 But the weakness of the invading 

1 Procopius, De Bell. Goth. lib. iv. 20, mentions " Frisians " among 
the three peoples of Britain. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. lib. i. c. 15. 

3 E. Chron. a. 477. Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 54. The brief entries of 
the Chronicle are largely expanded by Henry of Huntingdon, who 
may have used poems or annals still extant in his time, and whose 
story here at least falls in with the geographical features of the 
locality. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 4I 

force is shown by the slowness with which the CHAp - r - 
Chronicle of the conquerors pictures ^Elle as fight- The con- 
ing his way in battle after battle across the streams the^saxon 
which cleave this strip of coast on their way to the Shore - 
Channel. 1 It was only after fourteen years of strug- 449-cjoo. 
gle that the Saxons reached the point where the 
south downs abut on the sea at Beachy Head, and 
dipped down in the district that formed the mouth 
of the Weald — a district guarded by the fortress of 
Anderida, whose massive walls still cover a rise 
above the general level of the coast at a spot which 
under its later name of Pevensey was to witness 
the landing of a greater conqueror in William the 
Norman. 

The siege of Anderida proved a long and a diffi- Anderida. 
cult one. Eastward of the fortress the ground lifts 
slowly towards our Hastings, where a sandstone ridge 
abuts upon the sea. This Forest-ridge, as it is called, 
is, in fact, the termination of a low rise which forms 
a water-parting through the whole length of the 
Weald, and which throws down the streams of the 
Weald to north and south by channels that they 
have hewn in the chalk downs on either side of it. 
Then, as now, the ground was covered with wood- 
land and copses ; but under the Roman rule the life 
of this district presented a striking contrast to the 
solitude and silence of the rest of the Andredsweald. 2 
Hid in its wooded gorges we find traces of a busy 
population of miners — the small round pits from 
which the nodules of their ore were dug, rude smelt- 

1 E. Chron. a. 485, for the fight at Mearcredsburn. 

2 See Wright's description of Pevensey in his Wanderings of an 
Antiquary. 



, 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. ing-furnaces on the hill-slope, big cinder-heaps cov- 
The con- ered nowadays with oak and elm. It must have 
thesaxon been the attacks of these miners that made the task 
shore. £ t } ie besiegers so hard a one. If we may trust the 
449-c. sop, tradition of a later time, 1 the Britons swarmed like 
bees round the English lines, assailing them by 
night, and withdrawing at dawn to the gorges of 
the Forest-ridge, where they lay in ambush for the 
parties that attacked them. An attempt to storm 
the town would at once draw the miners on the rear 
of its assailants ; and when the besiegers, galled by 
the storm of arrows and javelins, turned from their 
task to encounter these foes, the Britons drew back 
to their fastnesses in the Weald. It was not till 
^Elle was strong enough to detach a part of his 
force to cover the siege that the resistance of the 
town came to an end. The terrible words of the 
Chronicle tell the story of its fall : the English " slew 
all that were therein, nor was there henceforth one 
Briton left." 2 The work of slaughter, we can hardly 
doubt, was soon completed by the attack and con- 
quest of the brave iron-workers who had failed to 
avert the doom of Anderida ; and from that time to 
the days of the Edwards no sound of quarryman or 
forge was heard in the gorges of the Forest-ridge. 
Bignor. q£ £} ie victories or settlement of the Saxons along 
the coast from Chichester to Pevensey we know lit- 
tle or nothing. Nowhere, indeed, was the land richer 



1 Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (ed. T. Arnold), p. 45. 

2 E. Chron. a. 491. Huntingdon adds, " Ita urbem destruxerunt 
quod nunquam postea re-edificata est : locus tantum quasi nobilis- 
simse urbis transeuntibus ostenditur desolatus " (?'. e. in the twelfth 
century), Hist. Angl. (ed. Arnold), p. 45. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. A * 

in plunder ; for the coast had been occupied by the chap. i. 
Romans from the date of their first settlement in The con- 
Britain, and the country side was dotted with the the Saxon 
homes of the wealthier provincials. A country- shore - 
house such as that whose remains have been dis- 449 - c - 500 - 
covered at Bignor, a few miles from Chichester, 
lights up for us the social life which was swept 
away by the Saxon sword. 1 The household build- 
ings of this mansion formed a court more than a 
hundred feet square, round the inner side of which 
ran a covered colonnade, with a tessellated pavement 
arranged in fanciful patterns. Within the house it- 
self the hall with its central fountain preserved the 
southern type of domestic building that the Roman 
builders brought from their sunnier land, as the fur- 
nace which heated the floor of the banqueting-room 
behind showed the ingenuity with which they ac- 
commodated themselves to the needs of a sterner 
climate. The walls of the larger rooms glowed with 
frescoes, fragments of which retain much of their 
original vividness of color, while their floors were 
of elaborate and costly mosaic -work. Figures of 
dancing nymphs filled the compartments of one 
chamber, a picture of the rape of Ganymedes formed 
the centre of another, a third was gay with pictures 
of the Seasons or of gladiatorial games, where Cupids 
sported as retiarii and secutores of the amphitheatre. 
But no traces remain of the line of low huts which 
here, as elsewhere, no doubt, leaned against the outer 
wall that girt in the circuit of buildings — huts which 
housed the serfs who tilled the lands of their owner, 

1 Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 243. There is 
a fuller description in his Wanderings of an Antiquary. 



.. THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. and whose squalor, in its dark contrast with the 

The con- comfort and splendor of the mansion itself, would 

thesaxon nave painted better for us than a thousand passages 

shore. f r0 m law or chronicle the union of material wealth 

449-c. 500. w ith social degradation that lay like a dark shadow 

over the Roman world. 
Landing Dimly as we trace this winning of the southeast- 
East Sax- ern coast by the men who were afterwards known as 
ons ' the Sussex or South Saxons, we pass as from light 
into darkness when we turn to the work of another 
Saxon tribe who must at about the same time have 
been conquering and settling on the other side of 
the Caint, to the north of the estuary of the Thames. 1 
In the utter lack of any written record of the strug- 
gle in this quarter, we can only collect stray glimpses 
of its story from the geographical features of this 
district and from its local names. From both these 
sets of facts we are drawn to the conclusion that it 
was not from the Thames that this district was 
mainly attacked. In that quarter there was little 
to tempt an invader. The clay flats which stretch 
along- the coast of Southern Essex were then but a 
fringe of fever-smitten and desolate fens, while the 
meadows that rise from them to the west were part 
of a forest tract that extended to the marshes of the 
Lea. The whole region, indeed, beyond the coast 

1 Huntingdon (Hist. Angl. ed. Arnold, p. 49) names as the first 
East-Saxon king, Ercenwine (or, as Florence calls him, ^Escwine), 
whose son and successor, Sleda, married the sister of ^Ethelberht 
of Kent. As the usage elsewhere was for the conquerors to gather 
into a kingdom some time after their first conquest, this would 
bring the landing in Essex to about the time of the landing in Sus- 
sex, which is of itself probable enough. Malmesbury makes Sleda 
their first king (Gest. Reg. ed. Hardy, lib. i. sec. 98). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ac 

was thick with woodland. In the Middle Ages all chap. i. 
Essex lay within the bounds of the royal forest ; The con- 
and its timber church-towers and log-framed home- tJe saxon 
steads still recall its wealth of wood. To the north- SIlore - 
ward, however, the country became somewhat clearer ; 449-c.50o. 
and here a tempting inlet offered itself in the estuary 
where the waters of the Chelm and the Stour found 
a common passage to the sea, and where Camulo- 
dunum offered a city to sack. 1 The town stood, like 
its successor, Colchester, on a steep rise or "dun," 
round whose northern and eastern sides bent the 
river Colne. Camulodunum was the oldest of the 
Roman settlements in Britain : temples and public 
buildings had already risen, indeed, within its bounds 
when the revolt under Boadicea broke the course of 
Roman conquest. Its size and massive walls' 2 prove 
it to have become in later days one of the busiest 
and wealthiest towns of the province ; and from the 
after-settlement of its foes we may probably gather 
that the district beneath its sway spread northward 
as far as the Stour. 

It was in the valleys of the Colne and Stour that Their 
the East Saxons, as these warriors came to be called, ries. 
seem mainly to have settled after the fall of Camulo- 
dunum. But here, as in their other conquest in the 
south, the settlement of the Saxons was small and 
unimportant. Neither tract, indeed, was large or 
fruitful enough to draw to it any great mass of the 

1 For Camulodunum, see map in Markham's Life of Fairfax, 
p. 309, etc., and Freeman, Archaeol. Journal, xxxiv. 47. 

2 The circuit is more perfect than anywhere else in Britain ; but 
the walls themselves have been reconstructed in later days. Free- 
man, Archseol. Journal, xxxiv. 55. The museum of the town is rich 
in Roman relics. 



4 6 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. i. conquerors, while from neither was it easy to push 
The con- across their bounds into more fertile districts. As 

the saxon the South Saxons were prisoned within their nar- 
shore " row strip of coast by the reaches of the Andreds- 

449 ~ c - 500 - weald, so the East Saxons found themselves as ef- 
fectually barred from any advance into the island 




Stanford* Geographical Eatab. 



by a chain of dense woodlands, the Waltham Chace 
of later ages, whose scanty relics have left hardly 
more than the names of Epping and Hainault for- 
ests. These woodlands, which stretched at this time 
in a dense belt on either side the Roding along the 
western border of the district that the invaders had 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



47 



won from the Thames to the open downs above chart. 
Saffron Walden, and were backed to the west by The con- 
the marshy valley of the Lea, whose waters widened the e saxon 
into an estuary as it reached the Thames, seem to s ^°i e - 
have been wholly uninhabited, for no trace remains 449-c.500. 
in their area of military stations or of the country- 
houses or burial-places of the provincials. How im- 
passable, in fact, these fastnesses had been found by 
the Romans is clear from the fact that even their 
road -makers never attempted to penetrate them. 
The lower portion of the Ermine Street, the road to 
the north, which in later days struck direct through 
this district from London to Huntingdon, did not 
exist in Roman times, and the British provincial was 
forced to make a circuit either by Leicester or Col- 
chester on his way to Lincoln and York. 1 

This double barrier to the west proved formidable Landing 

of the 

enough to hold the invaders at bay for almost a Engie. 
hundred years. But to the northward no such bar- 
rier hindered the East Saxons from sharing in a 
fight that must have been going on at this time in 
the chalk uplands which rose to the north of them 
across the Stour. It is in this district that we first 
meet with a third race of conquerors, whose work 
was to be of even greater moment in our history 
than that of Saxon or Jute. The men who were to 
spread along the Yare and the Orwell, and to march 
in triumph through the massive gate which recalls 
the strength of Roman Lincoln, whose work it was 
to colonize Mid-Britain and the line of the Trent, 
as well as to win for their own the vast regions be- 

1 Guest, " Four Roman Ways," Archaeol. Journal, xiv. 1 16. 



4 8 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



Ende. 



chap. i. tween the Firth of Forth and the Humber, were 
The con- drawn from a tribe whose name was destined to ab- 
t£e saxon sorb that of Saxon and Jute, and to stamp itself on 
shore, £] ie p e0 pi e which sprang from the union of the con- 
449-C.500. querors of Britain, as on the land which they won. 1 
These were the Engle, or Englishmen. The bulk of 
the tribes who then bore this name, if in the dark- 
ness of their early history they have been rightly 
traced by modern research, lay probably along the 
middle Elbe, in the country about Magdeburg ; while 
fragments of the same race were found on the Weser, 
in what is now known as Lower Hanover and Olden- 
burg, and in the peninsula which juts from the shores 
of North Germany to part the Baltic and the North- 
ern Seas. 2 
Tiu East It is in the heart of this peninsula that we still find 
the district which preserves their name of Angeln, or 
the Engleland ; and, from the desert state of this dis- 
trict as men saw it hundreds of years afterwards, 3 
it would seem that, unlike their Saxon neighbors, the 
bulk of whom remained in their own homesteads, the 
whole Engle people forsook their earlier seats for 
the soil of Britain. Such a transfer would account 
for the wide area of their conquests. Of their inva- 
sion or settlement no chronicle has come down to 
us ; 4 but their first descents seem to have been aimed 



1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 15. 2 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 45. 

3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 15. 

4 Of the conquest of East Anglia, Lincolnshire, the Fen-land, Mid- 
Britain, and Yorkshire, we have no record, either on the part of 
conquered or conquerors. In Northumbria the Chronicle tells only 
the fact of Ida's elevation to the kingship and seizure of Bam- 
borough ; while Nennius preserves a faint tradition of some of the 
earlier conflicts. We are forced, therefore, to fall back on the in- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



49 



against the upland into which the northernmost chart. 
chalk-rises that diverge from the Berkshire Downs The con- 
widen as they reach the sea. This tract, which tJesaam 
comprises our present shires of Norfolk and Suf- shore - 
folk, had drawn settlers to it from the earliest times 449-C.500. 
of British history. It had been the seat of the 
Iceni, the most powerful of the tribes among whom 
the island had been parted before the Roman rule, 
and whose name, like that of the " Gwent " in which 
they lived, was preserved in a Venta Icenorum that 
was the predecessor of our Norwich. The downs 
which form its western portion were, for the most 
part, stretches of heath and pasture, over which wan- 
dered huge flocks of bustards ; but in the river- 
courses that break through the levels of clay and 
gravel between these downs and the sea, population 
and wealth had grown steadily through the ages of 
Roman rule ; and the importance of the country was 
shown by the care with which the provincial admin- 
istration had guarded its coast. 

The district formed, in fact, the last unconquered Their 
remnant of the Saxon Shore. But only their ruins conques s ' 
tell us of the fall of its strongholds — of Brancaster on 
the shore of the Wash, or of Garianonum at the 
mouth of the Yare ; while not even its ruins remain 
to tell of the fall of Venta Icenorum, or of the con- 
quest of the district that lay around it. # All we learn 
from the scanty record of later days is that the as- 
sailants of this region came direct from the German 
shores ; that their attacks were " many and oft ;" and 

dications given us by archaeology and by the physical character 
of the ground itself in attempting a rough sketch of the English 
advance. 



tjO THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. that countless strifes between these little parties and 

The con- the ealdormen who headed them broke their war 

tKaxon against the British. 1 From the size of the later 

shore. nunc ireds we ma y perhaps gather that the conquerors 

449-c. 500. settled thickly over the soil, 2 while their local names 

'lead us to believe that offshoots from the Saxon 

houses who were conquering on the Colne joined 

the Engle in their attack on the Gwent. 3 The very 

designations of Norfolk and Suffolk tell how one 

folk of the conquerors fought its way inland from 

the estuary at Yarmouth up the valleys of the Ouse, 

the Wensum, the Yare, and the Waveney to the 

northern half of the upland, while another and a 

lesser folk struck up from the common mouth of 

the Orwell and the Stour to the southern downs. 4 

Norwich, no doubt, formed the central settlement of 

1 Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (ed. Arnold), p. 48. " Ea tempestate 
venerunt multi et saepe de Germania, et occupaverunt East-Angle 
et Merce ; sed necdum sub uno rege redacta erant. Plures autem 
proceres certatim regiones occupabant, unde innumerabilia bella 
fiebant : proceres vero, quia multi erant, nomine carent." 

2 One Norfolk hundred, that of Humbleyard, contains less than 
23,000 acres, or less than many single townships in Yorkshire or 
Lancashire. 

3 See lists in Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 456, etc. 

* Flor. Wore. ed. Thorpe (i. 260), in one of the appendices to his 
work, fixes approximately the date of this conquest : " Regno poste- 
rius Cant-wariorum, et prius regno Occidentalium Saxonum, exor- 
tum est regnum Orientalium Anglorum," z. e. its " kingdom " was 
set up between 455 and 519. Baeda, speaking of Rsedwald, who 
was king of the East Angles at the close of the sixth century, calls 
him " filius Tytili, cujus pater fuit Vuffa, a quo reges Orientalium 
Anglorum Vuffingas appellant" (Hist. Eccl. ii. 15). If Uffa was the 
first king, the beginning of the kingdom cannot be thrown much 
further back than the latter date of 519 ; and as we must allow for 
a period of isolated conquests and anarchy before this date, the first 
descents of the East Engle cannot be far from the time at which we 
have placed them. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



51 



the one folk, as Sudbury may have formed that of chap. i. 
the other; and though there are enough common Thecon- 
names among each to show what their after-history t 2e sa«m 
implies — that there was no deep severance between Shore - 
them- — the far sfreater number of local desicrnations 449 - - 500 - 
which are peculiar to either district 1 points to a real 
individuality in the " folks " who conquered them. 
From the downs the conquerors again pushed inland 
to the flats at their feet, and the vale ' of the little 
Ouse was included in their territory. But they can- 
not have been vigorous assailants of the towns about 
the Wash, if the rampart which runs across New- 
market Heath from Rech to Cowledge was, as is 
possible, their work. 2 The Devil's Dyke, as this 
barrier is called, is clearly a work of defence against 
enemies advancing from the Fens ; and as a defence 
to the East Anglians it was of priceless value, for, 
stretching as it did from a point where the country 
became fenny and impassable to a point where the 
woods equally forbade all access, it covered the only 
entrance into the country they had won. But if the 
dyke be a work of the conquerors of this part of the 
coast, its purely defensive character shows that their 
attack was at an end ; and that it was rather as as- 
sailants than as a prey that they regarded the towns 
of Central Britain. 

But even if the invaders were forced to halt at Saxon 

1 • r 1 • i 1 r 1 S' l0re con - 

this stage 01 their advance, they were now firmly quered. 



1 See the lists in Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 456. 

2 Its ditch faces towards Cambridgeshire and the Fens (Camden's 
Britannia, 1753, vol. i. p. 487). It was the boundary of the kingdom 
as well as of the diocese of East Anglia. The name is probably a 
Christian version of Woden's Dyke, or Wansdyke. 



^ 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. i. planted on British soil. With the settlement of 
The con- East Anglia the conquest of the Saxon Shore was 
tSe saxon complete, and the whole coast of Britain from the 
shore. Wash to Southampton Water was in the hands of 
449-C.500. the invader. Its fortresses were broken down. Its 
towns were burned and desolate. A new people 
was planted on its soil. Even if we look on the 
dates given by English tradition as at best approxi- 
mations to the truth, they can hardly be wrong when 
they point out this district as having been the first 
to be won, and as having taken long years in the 
winning. It is, indeed, the slow progress of the in- 
vaders, and the bitterness which would naturally 
spring from so protracted a struggle, that best ac- 
counts for the differences which even a casual ex- 
amination of the map discloses between the settle- 
ment of the conquerors here and their settlement in 
Central or Northern Britain ; for nowhere is the Eng- 
lish settlement so thick, nowhere do we find the 
tribal houses so crowded on the soil, or the hun- 
dreds, in which the settlers grouped themselves, so 
small and so thickly clustered. 1 

1 Kemble, in his Saxons in England, pointed out that the hun- 
dreds along the coast — which he regarded as representing the set- 
tlements of the free settlers — were smaller and thicker than those 
of the interior ; and as regards the Saxon Shore, this is true enough. 
Elsewhere it does not apply in the same degree ; and Professor 
Stubbs urges that " Gloucester and Wiltshire are as minutely sub- 
divided as Devonshire and Dorsetshire" (Const. Hist. i. 113, note). 
But this hardly tells against the identification of the smaller hun- 
dreds with the earlier settlements — as Devon and Dorset are, like 
Gloucestershire, among later conquests — or against the truth of 
Kemble 's statement if it be restricted to the Saxon Shore. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



53 



CHAPTER II. 

CONQUESTS OF THE ENGLE. 
c. ^oo-c. 570. 

To the province the loss of the Saxon Shore must Barriers 
have been a terrible loss; for with its conquest" 
Britain was cut off from the continent, she was 
isolated from the rest of the civilized world, and a 
fresh impulse must have been given to the anarchy 
that had begun in the strife of her Romanized and 
Celtic populations. But greatly as it might weaken 
Britain, the loss of this tract was far from throwing 
her open to the invaders. We have seen what bar- 
riers held back the Jute of Kent, and the Saxon on 
either side of him; but barriers as impassable held 
back the Engle of the Eastern Gwent, for the forest 
line which began on the Thames reached on along 
their western frontier to the Wash, and the Wash 
stretched to the northward from Newmarket to the 
sea. The Fens, which occupied this huge break in 
the eastern coast of Britain, covered in the sixth 
century a far larger space than now ;' for while they 
stretched northward up the Witham almost as far 
as Lincoln, and southward up the Cam as far as 
Cambridge, they reached inland to Huntingdon and 
Stamford, and the road between those places skirted 

1 Pearson's Historical Maps of England, p. 3; and map of Bri- 
tannia Romana. 



54 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. ii. their bounds to the west. So vast a reach of tangled 

conquests marsh offered few temptations to an invader ; and we 

Engie! shall see grounds at a later time for believing that the 

c "500- Gyrwas, as the Engle freebooters who found a home 

c.j>70. m its islands called themselves, were for a long time 

too weak to break through the line of towns that 

guarded its inner border. 

Conquest Had the invaders pushed inland only from this 

ofLmdsey. x . 

quarter, tnerelore, the resistance ot the Britons might 
have succeeded in prisoning them within the bounds 
of the Saxon Shore, as that of Gaul at a later day 
prisoned the Northmen within the bounds of Nor- 
mandy. But the sixth century can hardly have been 
long begun when each of the two peoples who had 
done the main work of conquest opened a fresh at- 
tack on the flanks of the tract they had won. On 
its western flank, as we shall see, the Saxons appeared 
in the Southampton Water. On its northern flank 
the Engle appeared in the estuaries of the Forth 
and of the H umber. To the south of this last great 
opening in the coast the oolitic range that stretch- 
es across Mid-Britain from the Cotswolds through 
Northamptonshire abuts on the waters of the river- 
mouth ; while to the east of the oolites, across the 
muddy stream of the Ancholme, rises a parallel line 
of chalk heights, cut off from the chalk upland of 
East Anglia by the Wash. As it extends to the 
south the oolitic range is broken by a deep depres- 
sion through which the Witham makes its way to 
the Wash ; and to the south of the Witham, over 
the country which is now known as Kesteven, 1 a 

1 Camden, Britannia (ed. 1753), vol. i. p. 554. See Camden's map 
of Lincolnshire. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 55 

mass of dense woodland stretched from the fen- chap, h. 
country about Boston across the heights into the conquests 
basin of the Trent. The two uplands, however, Jngie. 
which lay to the north of this wold tract formed c "^" 
even then a populous and fertile part of Britain. c - 57 °- 
Roman industry had begun the work of draining 
its marshes ; its long reaches of heath were already 
broken with farms and homesteads ; and the houses 
which lay dotted over the country side show by the 
character of their ruins that its landowners were 
men of wealth and culture. The Ermine Street 
from the south struck like an arrow from Stamford 
through the woods of Kesteven along the crest of 
the heights, to drop suddenly into the valley of the 
Witham as it breaks through them ; and, uniting 
with the Fosse Road from the Trent valley as it 
crossed the river, again climbed the steep slope on 
the other side of the gap, over which streams now- 
adays, in picturesque confusion, the modern city of 
London. At the edge of the table-land to which 
this ascent leads, on a site marked by the minster 
and castle that now tower over the city, stood the 
square fortress of the first Roman Lindum ; and 
through this earlier town the road struck by the 
Portway Gate, which is still left to us, straight on- 
ward to the upland without its walls. Here, as else- 
where, however, the growth of the place had brought 
about an extension of its defences ; a fortified sub- 
urb spread down the hill in the line of the modern 
Lincoln to the stream which even then furnished 
an important inlet for the coasting trade of Central 
Britain ; and since the close of the Roman rule the 
citizens seemed to have striven to strengthen their 



56 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. ii. walls by raising a line of earthworks to the north of. 
conquests the town. 1 But growth and commerce were alike 

Engfe! brought to an end by the storm which fell on them ; 

c loo- an< ^ town and suburb must have been left a heap of 

c. 570. ruins while their conquerors spread over the deserted 

country north of the Witham, and settled down in 

croft and homestead as the Lindiswara, the " dwellers 

about Lindum." 2 

The The conquest of Lindsey, however, brought the 

Wolds" Engle little save plunder. The estuary of the Hum- 
ber, with a huge swamp that spread along the bed 
of the lower Trent, and of which a portion remains 
in the Isle of Axholme, girt these uplands in on the 
north and northwest; while over the whole of the 
modern shire south of the Witham, from Lincoln to 
Stamford, stretched the thick woods of Kesteven, 
and the Holland of the Fens. It was only along the 
Fosse Road from Lincoln to Newark that the country 
was open for an advance ; and along this the Lindis- 
wara may have crept slowly to the Trent. But it 
was the effort of another tribe of conquerors that 
brought the Engle fairly into the heart of Britain. 
While the assailants of Lindsey had been striking 
from the H umber over the heights and wolds on the 
south of its estuary, other Engle adventurers must 
have been seizing the flat promontory or naze at the 
mouth of the Humber, to which they gave the name 
of Holderness. Fertile as drainage has now made 



1 See G. T. Clark, " Lincoln Castle," Archaeol. Journal, xxxiii. 213 ; 
Freeman, Norman Conquest, iv. 212. 

2 We have no means of dating the settlement of the Lindiswara ; 
but we can hardly be wrong in placing it between that of the East 
Engle and the Deirans. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



57 



this district, it can then have been little more than a char n. 
narrow line of mud flats, which offered small temp- conquests 
tation for settlement. But across the stream of the E ng i e e 
Hull, in whose marshy and desolate channels men c ~^ _ 
hunted the beaver which gave its name to our Bev- c - 57 °- 
erley, the ground rises gently to a crescent of chalk 




MI D 
BRITAIN 



Roman names LIN DUN! 

English „ EOFOBW/C 
Modern „ Lichfield 
English Miles- 



Stanford^ Geographical Kstabi 



downs, the wolds that run from the Humber by Mar- 
ket-Weighton to the cliffs of Flamborough Head. 
Though dykes and gravel mounds scar their surface, 
the want of water would have always prevented any 
settlement on these wolds ; they must have been 
at this time mere sheepwalks, as they remained till 



eg THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. ii. half a century ago, and could be easily overrun by 
conquests the invader. The wolds, however, were hardly mas- 
Engie! tered when their conquerors looked on a richer and 
c ~ more tempting country. To north and to west the 
c 570. chalk heights plunge abruptly down steep slopes of 
scanty turf to a plain at their feet, through which 
the stream of the Derwent bends from its rise beside 
the sea on the east to pour its waters into the H um- 
ber. The springs that break from the base of the 
cliffs make the lower Derwent vale a rich and fertile 
country; and here, as the local names show, the 
houses of the conquerors — the Deirans, as they came 
to call themselves — were thickly planted. The dis- 
trict about Weighton seems to have been chosen as 
the sacred ground of their settlement; and a temple 
of their gods is said by local tradition to have stood 
in the village of Goodmanham. 1 On the north, the 
narrower space of the upper vale forced them to hug 
the heights more closely ; though the fall of Derven- 
tio, which lay probably on the site of Malton, would 
open to them the country round it, where their kings 
in later days found a favorite home. 2 Holderness, 
the wolds, and the valley of the Derwent now form 
the East Riding of Yorkshire ; and it is likely 
enough that this local division preserves, however 
roughly, the boundaries of the earlier kingdom of 
the Deirans. 
Eboracum. But they were soon drawn onward. Beyond the 
green meadows at the feet of the wolds stretched 
away to the westward and the northward one of the 
. richest and most fertile regions in Britain. Country- 

1 The site of the temple was shown in Baeda's day (Hist. Eccl. ii. 
13). 2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



59 



houses of rich landowners studded thickly the tract char ir. 
of red marls that spreads along the Wharfe and the conquests 
Ouse; and in the midst of this level stood the city Engie! 
of York, or Eboracum, 1 once the capital of Britain. c- ~^~ _ 
The town lay on a tongue of land between the broad c - 57 °- 
channel of the Ouse and the bed of a lesser stream, 
the Fosse, which came through a marshy and difficult 
country from the woodlands beneath the wolds. To 
the military importance and strength of its position 
was doubtless due the existence of the camp whose 
limits are still marked by the small square of mas- 
sive walls that enclosed in Trajan's day the earlier 
Roman city. 2 But the town soon overleaped these 
bounds. Placed as it was at the head of the tidal 
waters of the Ouse, and forming the natural centre of 
Northern Britain, it became under Severus the seat 
of the provincial government and the headquarters 
of the force which guarded Britain against the Picts. 
Before the close of the Roman rule, it covered the 
whole area of the modern city on either side of the 
Ouse, while beyond it lay suburbs a mile in length 



1 Phillips (Archaeol. Journal, vol. x. p. 183) infers from a study of 
roads, etc., that " Eboracum was not situated on the earliest track 
of the middle road to the north. That track, in fact, went from near 
Tadcaster to Aldborough, leaving York ten miles to the right. But 
at the epoch of the Antonine Itinerary the direct route was aban- 
doned, and the deviation through Eboracum substituted." Free- 
man, Norman Conquest, iv. 202, and Raine, Historians of the Church 
of York, i. praef. (Rolls series), throw light on the early topography 
of York, whose Roman antiquities may be studied in the Ebora- 
cum of Drake and the Eburacum of Wellbeloved. 

2 A broken tablet in the York Museum, which tells of work done 
by the ninth legion in Trajan's day, is the earliest monument of 
Eboracum. Another, of a Decurio, shows the form taken by its 
municipal administration. 



6 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. ii. and roads lined with tombs. 1 As the dwelling-place 
conquests of the Caesar Constantius, York became for a while 
Engil one °f the Imperial cities of the Empire. It was yet 
c 500- more illustrious as the birthplace of Constantine, and 
c. 570. as the spot from which he started on that wonderful 
career which changed the face of the world. The 
work of Constantine left its traces on Eboracum, as 
on the rest of the Empire ; its bishop took his place 
beside the Imperial vicar; and the shrines of Sera- 
pis and Mithras, which were frequent in the older 
city, were superseded by a Christian basilica. With 
the departure of the Roman administration, however, 
and with the inroads of the Pict, the glory of the city 
passed away; but it remained a strong and wealthy 
place — the head, it may be, of a confederacy of the 
neighboring cities to which its high-roads led ; and 
the marks of its greatness survived in the lofty walls 2 

1 The wealthier class of burghers and officials are found buried 
along the road to Calcaria or Tadcaster. It is from these tombs 
that the relics of Roman life preserved at York have mostly been 
drawn, fragments of the fine Samian ware brought for rich citizens' 
use from the Continent, curious egg-shell pottery, vases and cups 
from a woman's toilet-case, sepulchral figures of soldiers and citi- 
zens, and the like. On the right bank of the Ouse, at a short dis- 
tance to the right of the road to Calcaria, was discovered, in 1873 
(Murray's Yorkshire, p. 70), a "cemetery for a poorer class than that 
which raised its monuments nearer to the great road, and for some 
distance along its course. In some parts of the ground Roman 
carters had been in the habit of shooting rubbish from the neigh- 
boring city. There were thick strata of Roman bricks, mortar, and 
pottery, mingled with fragments of wall plaster, on which colored 
patterns were distinct. Adjoining this rougher portion of the cem- 
etery two or three deep pits, or putei,were found, into which, as was 
usual, the bodies of slaves had been thrown carelessly and pell- 
mell, as was evident from the confused mass of bones in all possible 
positions." 

2 One noble fragment of its wall survives in a bastion, cased with 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 6 1 

and towers which awed Alcuin two centuries later, chap.ii. 
as well as in the " proofs of Roman refinement " that conquests 
were still visible in the days of William of Malmes- Jngie. 
bury. 1 c ."^o- 

In the century that had passed since the close of c - 57 °- 
the Roman rule, York had probably felt the need of Conquest 
additional defence ; and modern inquiry has detect- Yorkshire. 
ed the work of its citizens in the mound of earth 
which encloses the modern city and which serves as 
a base for its later wall. 2 But the effort proved a 
fruitless one, and after a struggle whose incidents 
are lost for us, the town, like its neighbor cities, lay 
a desolate ruin, while its conquerors spread, slaying 
and burning, along the valley of the Ouse. 3 Along 
its southern course, indeed, there was little worth the 
winning. The moorlands that lie close to York on 
the west run onward to the Peak of Derbyshire in 
a wild region of tumbled hills, traversed but by a few 
pack-roads, 4 a region which formed a British king- 
dom that for a hundred years to come defied the 
arms of the invaders ; 5 and though these moorlands 

neat masonry of .small ashlar blocks, which are broken by a line of 
red brick. The tower is embowered nowadays in greenery, and 
gay with flowers. From its base the ground falls in steep slopes to 
the river, lying deep in what is still a green ravine. This tower 
stood at the southwest angle of the Roman city. 

1 Raine, Historians of the Church of York, i. praef. xiii., who adds, 
" In no other Roman city in Britain have remains of equal number 
and importance been discovered " (xv.). 

2 G. T. Clark, "The Defences of York," Archgeol. Journal, vol. 
xxxi. p. 232. 

3 " Every Roman station and house in the north shows traces of 
having been destroyed by fire" (Raine, Historians of the Church 
of York, i. praef. xvii.). 

* Phillips traces and examines these. Archaeol. Journal, vol. x. p. 181. 
5 This district answers roughly to the present West Riding. 



6 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. ii. of Elmet sheer away from the Ouse as it passes to 

conquests the Humber, the broadening level which stretched 

Engl?, along its lower course, as along the lower channels 

~ of the Wharfe, the Aire, and the Don that come 

c. 500- 

c 570. down to it from the moors, was then a wild waste of 
oak forest and fen. 1 Through this tract, in the nar- 
row strip of open tillage between the marshes and 
the edge of Elmet, ran the one road which led from 
Central Britain to the plain of York, crossing the 
Don at Doncaster and its two fellow-rivers at Cas- 
tleford and at Tadcaster, where it bent sharply aside 
to Eboracum. The fall of these cities must have 
accompanied the conquest of this district, but the 
towns seem to have been small, and, save at Calcaria, 
the country would furnish small room for settlement. 
North of York, as the road crossed the Don and 
struck up the Swale by Catterick 2 to the Tees, a 
fairer and wider tract opened before the invaders, 
and the peasants of Aldborough show on the floor- 
ing of their cottages mosaic pavements that bear 
witness to the luxury and refinement which passed 
away in the wreck of Isurium. 3 It was along this 

1 This was the district of Hatfield Chase, a northern outlier of 
the great fen through which the Trent made its way to the Humber. 

2 Cataractonium seems from its remains to have been little more 
than a small walled station, from which the northern road struck 
across the desolate moors to the wall, while a side-track ran north- 
westward to Lavatrse, or Bowes, in Cumberland. 

3 Isurium can have been little inferior to York in size or wealth. 
As the forest of Galtres blocked all passage eastward of the Ouse, 
it was by the western bank of the river that the main road struck 
to the north across the lower channel of the Nidd and the passage 
over the Ure at Isurium. As commanding this passage, Isurium 
was a military point of some importance, but it was also important 
as the point of junction of this great northern main road with a 
road which came from the vale of Malton and Derwent to the east, 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 5, 

central plain, however, that the Deirans could alone chap. h. 
find booty. The cliff-like face of the Hambleton conquests 
Hills, towering over a forest ' that extended along the Engie. 
Ouse on its eastern bank just above York, guarded c ~^ _ 
moorlands which stretched from the vale of Der- c - 57 °- 
went to that of the Tees ; and it was only along the 
little stream-courses which ran down to the vale of 
Pickering, or in the openings which break the line 
of its coast, that the Engle can have settled in the 
lonely wilds which they named " Cliff-land," or Cleve- 
land. Nor can their settlements have been thicker 
in the moorlands that fronted them on the north- 
west. The border line of Yorkshire still marks the 
furthest bounds to which they drove the Britons as 
they won their way up Wharfedale, or traversed the 
wide dip of Ribblesdale, or pushed across broad past- 
ures and through primeval woods that sheltered the 



skirting the northern edge of Galtres forest, along the slopes of the 
Hambleton Hills, as with a second which came directly from Tad- 
caster and the south, and a third which came from Ilkley and the 
western moors. The rude masses of gritstone, some twenty feet 
high, which stand in the fields hard by, and are here known as the 
" Devil's Arrows," suggest an equal importance in yet earlier ages, 
as do possibly the large round mounds that stand outside the city 
walls, and one of which still remains. From the existing traces of 
foundations, the city must have been a closely packed mass of nar- 
row lanes. " Traces of fire," we are told, " are still visible on parts 
of the walls." 

1 The later forest of Galtres formed a relic of this woodland. 
Even in the Middle Ages Galtres extended from the walls of York 
as far northward as Easingwold and Craik, and as far eastward as 
Castle-Howard. In Leland's day the part of the forest between 
Castle-Hutton and York was, near York itself, " moorish and low 
ground, and having little wood, in the other part higher and reason- 
ably wooded." It then abounded in wild deer. So lonely was the 
waste north of York that travellers often lost their way when mak- 
ing for the city. 



6 4 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



char ii. wo lf and the wild white oxen over the gap of Stain- 
conquests more along the road from Catterick to Carlisle. 1 
Engie! If history tells us nothing of the victories that laid 
c loo- this great district at the feet of its conquerors, the 
C.JS70. spade of the archaeologist has done somewhat to re- 
The veal the ruin and misery of the conquered people. 
Britom. The caves of the Yorkshire moorlands preserve 
traces of the miserable fugitives who fled to them 
for shelter. Such a cave opens on the side of a 
lonely ravine, known now as the King's Scaur, high 
up in the moors beside Settle. 2 In primeval ages it 
had been a haunt of hyenas, who dragged thither the 
mammoths, the reindeer, the bisons, and the bears 
that prowled in the neighboring glens. At a later 
time it became a home of savages, whose stone adzes 
and flint knives and bone harpoons are still embed- 
ded in its floor. But these, too, vanished in their 
turn, and this haunt of primitive man lay lonely and 
undisturbed till the sword of the English invaders 
drove the Roman provincials for shelter to the 
Moors. The hurry of their flight may be gathered 
from the relics their cave-life has left behind it. 
There was clearly little time to do more than to 
drive off the cattle, the swine, the goats, whose bones 

1 The story of a flight of an " Archbishop Sampson " from York 
on its fall, about a.d. 500, to Brittany is simply an invention of the 
twelfth century, and part of the struggle of the church of Dol 
against the claims of the see of Tours (Stubbs and Haddan, Coun- 
cils of Great Britain, i. 149, note). But the date of the fall of York 
may be fairly accurate. The first king of the Deirans was JEWa., the 
son of Yffi, whose reign began in 559 (Flor. Wore. ed. Thorpe, i. 
268) ; and we may therefore probably date their invasion as going 

• on during the forty or fifty years before that time. 

2 Boyd Dawkins, Cave - hunting, pp. 81-125, has given a full ac- 
count of the series of remains found in this cave. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



65 



lie scattered round the hearth fire at the mouth of chap, n. 
the cave, where they served the wretched fugitives conquests 
for food. The women must have buckled hastily Eng i e . 
their brooches of bronze or party-colored enamel, c ^ _ 
the peculiar workmanship of Celtic Britain, and c - 570 - 
snatched up a few household implements as they 
hurried away. The men, no doubt, girded on as 
hastily the swords whose dainty sword-hilts of ivory 
and bronze still remain to tell the tale of their doom, 
and, hiding in their breast what money the house 
contained, from coins of Trajan to the wretched 
" minims " that told of the Empire's decay, mounted 
their horses to protect their flight. At nightfall all 
were crouching beneath the dripping roof of the cave, 
or round the fire that was blazing at its mouth, and 
a long suffering began in which the fugitives lost 
year by year the memory of the civilization from 
which they came. A few charred bones show how 
hunger drove them to slay their horses for food ; 
reddened pebbles mark the hour when the new ves- 
sels they wrought were too weak to stand the fire, 
and their meal was cooked by dropping heated 
stones into the pot. A time seems to have come 
when their very spindles were exhausted, and the 
women who wove in that dark retreat made spindle 
whorls as they could from the bones that lay about 
them. 

While the Engle were thus mastering the future Northern 
Yorkshire from the estuary of the H umber, they 
were making an even more important settlement in 
the estuary of the Forth. No district of Britain had 
been the scene of so long a conflict as the country 
between the Firth of Forth and the Tyne. Through- 

5 



66 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. ii. out the period of the Roman rule, this border had 
congests been a battle - ground. The Roman conquest of 
Engi*. Southern Britain, indeed, was hardly completed when 
~ the pressure of the unconquered tribes to the north 
c. 570. forced Hadrian to guard the province by a barrier 
drawn right across this tract of country. 1 A massive 
wall, backed to the south by an earthen rampart and 
a ditch, and strengthened by military stations and 
watch-towers along its course, stretched for seventy 
miles across the wild moorlands between the thin 
strips of cultivated ground which then lined the 
mouth of the Solway or the Tyne. Nothing gives a 
livelier picture of Roman Britain on its military side 
than the remains of this wall and the monuments we 
find among its ruins. With the departure, however, 
of the legion that garrisoned this barrier, its whole 
line must have been left desolate. The towns in its 
course were merely military stations, which could 
contribute nothing to its defence when the garrison 
was withdrawn, and which would be left as deserted 
as the wall itself. The ground which it traversed, 
indeed, was, for the most part, a waste that could 
furnish few supplies for its inhabitants ; and the 
troops and camp-followers who held the barrier 
must have been provided with food and supplies 
from the headquarters at Eboracum. Even had a 
national force been ready to take the place of the 
legions, the maintenance of such a garrison involved 
an organization and expense which can hardly have 
been possible for the broken province ; and the 
great barrier probably sank at once into solitude 

1 Dr. Collingwood Bruce has summed up all we know of this bar- 
rier in his volume on The Roman Wall. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



6 7 



and ruin, while the Picts poured unmolested into the chap. n. 
country which it guarded. Marks of their havoc conquests 
may perhaps still be traced in the station that occu- E ng i e e 
pied the site of Maryport to the south of Carlisle, c "^_ 
amidst whose ruins we find a tower -orate broken c -5?o. 

o 

down by violence, and the houses of its main street 




charred with fire. 1 Further south at Ribchester, on 
the Ribble, among the burnt wreck of the town, 
have been found skeletons of men who may have 
made their last stand against the savage marauders. 
Raids such as those of the Picts, however, destruc- 



Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 452. 



68 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. ii. tive as they must have been, were but passing inci- 
conquests dents in the life of Northern Britain ; for, like the 
Engie. later Highlander, the Pict seems to have gathered 
c ^oo- n * s booty only to withdraw with it to his native hills ; 
c. 570. an d on the western coast, which was mainly subject 
The Engie to their incursions, the Britons maintained their polit- 
Northem ical existence for centuries to come. A far greater 
Bntam. cnan g e was wrought by the marauders who assailed 
this region from its eastern coast. It is possible that 
descents from North Germany had long since plant- 
ed Frisian settlers in the valley of the Tweed, and 
that it is to their descents that the Firth of Forth 
owed its early name of the Frisian Sea. 1 If this were 
so, Northumbria on either side of the Cheviots can- 
not have been strange to the German freebooters ; 
and the withdrawal of the legionaries would soon be 
followed by their appearance off its coasts. But it 
is not till long after this time that we catch any his- 
torical glimpses of English attack. 2 Through the 
dim haze of northern tradition, we see a chieftain 3 

1 Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 191. Nennius calls it Mare Freisicum, 
cap. 38. 

2 Nennius, sec. 56, 57. Nennius says that after Hengest's death, 
his son Octa passed from this district into Kent. There is nothing 
impossible in a Jutish attack on this coast at this early date ; and 
it receives some support from Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, ed. Har- 
dy, i. p. 61, "annis enim uno minus centum Nordhanhimbri duces 
communi habitu contenti, sub imperio Cantuaritarum privatos age- 
bant," till Ida's choice as king, in 547. 

3 Nennius, sec. 56. This is the Arthur so famous afterwards in 
romance. Mr. Skene, who has done much to elucidate these early 
struggles, has identified the sites of these battles with spots in the 
north (see his Celtic Scotland, i. 153-154, and more at large his 
Four Ancient Books of Wales, i. 51-58); but as Dr. Guest has 
equally identified them with districts in the south, the matter must 
still be looked upon as somewhat doubtful. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



69 



struggling in battle after battle at the opening of c ha p- n. 
the sixth century against invaders whose earlier conquests 
raids reached to the Lennox, but who are gradually % ng il 
held at bay within the basin of the Tweed. Here, c ~^ _ 
however, they seem, by the midst of the sixth century, c - 57 °- 
to have made themselves masters of the ground. 
Along Lothian, or the coast between Lammermoor 
and the Forth, they had pushed to the little stream 
of the Esk, where their way was barred by the rock- 
fortress of Myned Agned, the site of the later Edin- 
burgh ; while south of the Lammermoor they had ad- 
vanced along the loops of the Tweed as far as the 
vale of the Gala Water, and up the dales and stream- 
lets which lie to the south and to the north of it, till 
their advance was thrown back from the wilder hill 
country on the west. Here the border line of the 
Cattrail, 1 as it strikes through Ettrick Forest, marks 
the border of Welsh and Engle. A barrier as diffi- 
cult curved round to the south in the line of the 
Cheviots ; but between the extremity of this range 
and the sea a thin strip of coast offered an open 
pathway into the country beyond the Tweed ; and 
Ida — " the Flame-bearer," as the Britons called him 
— a chieftain of the invaders, whom they raised in 
547 to be their king, seized in this quarter a rock . 
beside the shore, and established a base for further 
conquest in the fortress of Bamborough. 2 

1 See Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 162. 

2 E. Chron. a. 547 (probably from the short chronicle annexed to 
Baeda's History). Bamborough, it tells us, was first enclosed by a 
hedge or stockade, and then by a wall. Nennius (sec. 63) says that 
the place took the name of Bamborough from Bebbe, the wife of 
^Ethelfrith. It is some sixteen miles southeast of Berwick. This 
setting-up of a kingdom under Ida is our only certain date for the 



7o 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap^h. I n these earlier conquests of the Bernicians, as 
conquests Ida's folk were called, the settlement was as com- 
Engi e e plete as in the rest of Britain. . Their homes, indeed, 
cloo- mus t have been scantily sprinkled over the wild and 
c.j>70. half-reclaimed country ; but, scant as they were, these 
Their " hams " and " tons " told as plainly as in other dis- 
" tricts the tale of English colonization. Dodings and 
Livings left their names to hamlets like Doddington 
and Livingston ; along the wild coast Tynings and 
Coldings made their fisher -villages at Tyningham 
and Coldingham ; while Elphinston and Edmonston 
preserve the memory of English Elphins and Ed- 
monds who raised their homesteads along the Teviot 
and the Tweed. Nowhere, indeed, has the English 
tongue been preserved in greater purity than in the 
district which now calls itself Southern Scotland. 1 
But the years that had been spent in winning this 
little tract show that the Bernician force was but a 
small one ; and the continued slowness of their 
southward advance from Bamborough proves that 
even after the union under Ida their strength was 
but little increased. Aided as they were by a civil 
strife which was breaking the strength of the North- 
western Britons, 2 Ida and Ida's six sons had to battle 
along the coast for half a century more before they 
could drive the Welsh over the western moorlands, 

Bernician settlement, and would place its probable beginning at a 
time which could not have been long after a.d. 500. 

1 See Murray, Northumbrian English. 

2 Thus Ida's third successor, Hussa, fought against four British 
kings, Urbgen, Riderchen, Guallanc, and Morcant (Geneal. at end 
of Nennius). These petty chieftains show how the country was 
broken up. See for this war, Skene, Four Ancient. Books of Wales, 
i. 336 et seq. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



71 



and claim for their own the little valleys of the chap.ii. 
streams which fell from these moors to the sea conquests 
through the modern Northumberland. 1 Engie. 

From the wild moors of Northumbria, however, we c ~^~ _ 
must pass southward to what was probably a yet c - 57 °- 
later scene of Ensile conquest in the valley of the The vaiiey 

of tJl£ 

Trent. Little as we know of the winning of the 
north, we know less of the winning of Central Brit- 



ofthe 
Trent. 




1 Our knowledge of the struggle is drawn from what seems to be 
a bit of genuine Northumbrian chronicle, embedded in the compila- 
tion of Nennius, sec. 63. The strife was long and doubtful : " in illo 
tempore aliquando hostes, nunc cives, vincebantur." Ida reigned 
till 559 (E. Chron. a. 547). 



y 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. n. ain ; and not a single record has been left of the 
conquests progress of the peoples whom we find settled at the 
Engie. close of the century in the districts of our Notting- 
c ~soo- nam > our Leicester, and our Northampton, or on the 
c. 570. head -waters of the°Trent. As their names show, 
they were of Engle race, and we shall, at a later 
period in our story, find reason to believe that their 
inroads and settlements cannot have taken place at 
a very early period in the sixth century. There was 
little, indeed, at this time to draw invaders to Central 
Britain. At the close of the Roman occupation, the 
basin of the Trent remained one of the wildest and 
least-frequented parts of the island. The lofty and 
broken moorlands of the Peak, in which the Pennine 
range as it runs southward from the Cheviots at last 
juts into the heart of Britain, were fringed, as they 
sloped to the plain, by a semicircle of woodlands, 
round the edge of which the river bent closely in 
the curve which it makes from its springs to the 
Humber. On the western flank of the moors a 
forest known afterwards as Need wood filled up the 
whole space between the Peak and the Trent, as far 
as our Burton. On their eastern flank the forest 
of Sherwood stretched from the outskirts of our 
Nottingham to a huge swamp into which the Trent 
widened as it reached the Humber. Here, indeed, 
a thin line of clay country remained open on the 
northern bank of the river, but elsewhere it was only 
on its southern bank that any space could be found 
for human settlement. But even on this bank such 
spaces were small and broken, for to the southwest 
the moorlands threw an outlier across the river in 
the bleak upland of Cannock Chase, which stretched 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 73 

almost to the verge of the forest of Arden, a mighty CHAP - IL 
woodland that rolled away far over Southern Staf- conquests 
fordshire nearly to the Cotswolds ; while in the very E ngle e 
centre of the valley they threw a second outlier c ~^ _ 
across the Trent in the rugged fastnesses of Charn- c - 57 °- 
wood, which stretched as far as the outskirts of 
Leicester. Even the open oolitic country that ex- 
tended from Charnwood to the borders of Lincoln- 
shire was narrowly bounded to the south by the 
fastnesses of Rockingham Forest, which occupied 
one half of the modern shire of Northampton. 

It was in this tract, along the southern bank of the Attack on 

tfl€ J: 1 }' 6 lit 

river, however, that settlement was most possible, as vaiiey. 
it was here that the Trent basin was first accessible 
to the new settlers. While the bulk of the Lindis- 
waras were slowly pushing their way through the 
fastnesses of Kesteven to their southern border on 
the Witham and at Stamford, smaller bodies may 
well have been descending into the valley of the 
Trent. From Lindum, indeed, one of the great 
lines of British communication led straight into this 
district. The Fosse Road, as it crossed Britain from 
Ilchester to Lincoln, following, for the most part, the 
northern slope of the oolitic range, struck by Leices- 
ter through the broken country to the south of the 
Trent before it climbed again to the upland at Lin- 
dum. If they marched by this road from their up- 
lands, the Lindiswara would touch the river at Farn- 
don, a village not far from the later Newark, and the 
name of the station which occupied this site 1 (Ad 

1 " Ad Pontem " and the Tiowulfing-ceaster which succeeded it 
(Baeda, Hist. Eccl. lib. ii. c. 16) have been identified with Newark, 
Southwell, and other places. It seems certainly to be Farndon. 



74 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap, ii. Pontem, or Bridge Road) shows that a bridge here 

conquests led into the districts across it. In this quarter, how- 

Engie. ever, there was little to be won. On the rising 

c^oo- ground that formed the outskirts of the Peak, along 

C.JS70. a ] me of some twenty miles from our Nottingham 

to Worksop, vast masses of oak and birch, broken 



CENTRAL BRITAIN. 




Stanford' a Geographical h'«tabli*h{ 



by barren reaches of heather, formed the mighty 
Sherwood, whose relics may still be seen in the 
woods of Welbeck or Thoresby or Clumber, and 
whose memory lingers in the tale of Robin Flood.' 
Between forest and river lay but a thin strip of open 



1 The skirts of Sherwood came down to the very north of South- 
well in the valley of the Trent. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



75 



clay land, with lifts of soft sandstone here and there chap, h. 
along the banks of the Trent ; and on the slopes of conquests 
one of these lifts, whose face had been long ago Engie. 
pierced with the cave - dwellings of primeval man, c "^,_ 
the house of the Snoting-as fixed a home which has c - 57 °- 
grown into our Nottingham. But the main settle- 
ment of the conquerors along the lower Trent must 
have been in the little dales that break the pictur- 
esque wold country that lies to the south of the 
river, and through which they pushed along its 
course as far as its junction with the 'Soar. 

Here, however, their course may have been barred Rat<E - 
for a while. Behind the lower course of the Soar, 
from the • neighborhood of Leicester by the craggy 
hills of Mount Sorrell, and 'past Loughborough to 
the steep rise of Castle Donington beside the Trent, 
lay the outliers of Charnwood, a rugged tract of 
granite peaks and dark woodlands that reached west- 
ward as far as Ashby-de-la-Zouch, a tract where — as 
the later legend of the country-side ran — " a squirrel 
might hop for miles from tree to tree, and a man 
journey in summer-time from Barden Hill to Beau- 
manoir without once seeing the sun." Only a few 
scattered oaks survive of the forest where the Prior 
of Alverscroft hunted in later days with hawk and 
hound, or where Ascham found Lady Jane Grey 
busy with her Plato ; but much of the region is still 
a wild and lonely one, and recalls the great fastness 
whose front may have held the Engle 1 at bay. But 
if their advance across the lower Soar was barred, 

: This is, however, a mere inference from the border of Notting- 
hamshire in this quarter, and the physical character of the country 
beyond it. 



7 6 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. ii. the Fosse Road by which they had descended from 
Conquests the Lincoln heights furnished an easy road to a 
Engie! richer spoil. Bending southward from the line of 
c 5oo- * ne Trent, it passed over the wolds to a point where 
cjrro. the little Wreak joins the Soar, and then struck 
along the Soar to Ratas. Ratae, the predecessor of 
our Leicester, 1 seems to have been the largest and 
most important town in Mid-Britain. Fragments of 
columns and capitals, wine -jars and brooches, with 
mosaic pavements from villas which stood without 
its gates, are all that are left nowadays of its glories ; 
though the basement of a temple of Janus was still 
recognized there in the twelfth century, 2 and a big 
piece of ruined masonry may preserve the memory 
of the wall that yielded to the English onset. When 
its capture was over, the site of the town lay lonely 
and deserted in the midst of the woodlands through 
which the Soar, even in the Middle Ages, still wound 
its way to the Trent ; and the only trace of its older 
life lingers on in the name of Leicester, 3 which clung 
to its ruins and passed to the town that rose among 
them as well as to the shire which represents the 
settlement of its conquerors. 
Gyrwas. The winning of the triangular space of rock and 
woodland which stretched from Ashby to the Trent 
was probably the latest work of the Middle English, 
as the men of our Leicestershire, and perhaps our 

1 For Ratae, see Thompson's English Municipal History, p. 32, 
and his Handbook to Leicester. A large number of Roman re- 
mains are preserved in its museum. 

2 By Geoffrey of Monmouth (Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and 
the Saxon, 152, note). 

3 " Legoracensis civitas " (Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, iii. 129) 
in eighth century ; Lege-ceaster in tenth. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. yy 

Nottinghamshire, came to be called ; l but we cannot chap. n. 
follow them as they spread over the surface of their conquest3 
new territory, as they pushed along the valley of Engie! 
the Wreak, over the wolds towards Belvoir, or across c< "^_ 
the marshes of the Nar to the fields of Market Bos- c - 57 °- 
worth, or by the upper Soar, here shrunk to a brook, 
from Ratae along the Fosse Road to the borders of 
the great forest of Arden. Arden was a barrier 
which, no doubt, brought the invaders for a while to 
a standstill. But along the upper Soar they would 
push easily to the slopes of the uplands which lay 
to the south of them, and where other Engle con- 
querors were probably already at work. For, diffi- 
cult as were the fastnesses of the Wash, the Gyrwas, 
or Fen-folk, must by this time have struggled through 
them to sack the towns which lay along the course 
of the road that marked its western edge. Of these 
towns the northernmost seems to have occupied 
the site of our Ancaster, amid whose " great square 
stones of old buildings " and " great vaultes " the 
ploughshare, as late as the days of the Tudors, dis- 
closed Roman sepulchres and Roman coins. 2 South 
of this, on a site marked by the village of Caistor on 
the Nen, stood Durobrivae, the centre of a district 
covered with potteries, whose kilns were dotted over 



1 Bseda gives together " Orientales Angli, Mediterranei Angli, 
Merci, tota Nordanhymbrorum progenies," as the Engle peoples of 
Mid-Britain (Hist. Eccl. i. 15), " Middle- Angli id est, Mediterranei 
Angli" (ibid. iii. 21). With Diuma began the bishopric of the 
Middle Engle (ibid.) as of the Mercians and Lindiswara. When 
the large sees were parted by Theodore, Leicester became the seat 
of that of the Middle English. 

2 Leland, Itinerary, i. 28, 29. Archdeacon Trollope has examined 
the site, etc., of Ancaster in Archseol. Journal, xxvii. 1. 



78 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



char n. the country for twenty miles round. Hundreds of 

conquests potters were employed in the manufacture of its 

ofthe i xi i i- 

Engie. wares ; and the hunting-scenes, the scenes of boar- 

cloo- spearing and stag -chasing, which they have graven 

c.j>70. on trie sur f ace f their work lift for us a corner of 

the veil that shrouds the life of Roman Britain. 1 It 




Stanford's (JeographicaX Esiab 1 . 



must have been the North Gyrwas, as their country 
included in later days its neighbor Peterborough, 2 



1 For Durobrivse, see Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, 
pp. 263, 264, and a paper by Archdeacon Trollope, Archseol. Jour- 
nal, xxx. 127. Mr. Artis has given plates of the remains in his Duro- 
brivae Illustrated. 3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 6. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



79 



who pushed up the Nen to the conquest of Duro- chap. u. 
brivas. Meanwhile the South Gyrwas were at work conquests 
along the line of the Ouse and the Cam, where Du- Engie. 
rolipons, near the present Huntingdon, but on the c ."goo_ 
other side of the river, guarded a bridge over the c - 57 °- 
Ouse, and where some miles to the southeast the 
country was commanded by the town of Cambori- 
tum, whose site became in later days the site of 
Cambridge. 1 The place was probably of impor- 
tance ; but so utter was its destruction that even 
in Baeda's day nothing was left but a few heaps of 
ruined stone from which the nuns of Ely fetched a 
sculptured sarcophagus of marble when they sought 
a tomb for their abbess ^Ethelthryth. 2 

Masters of the road along the borders of the Wash, The Engie 
the Gyrwas would naturally be drawn forward to the ampton- 
upland which juts from the westward into its waters, 
the upland of Northamptonshire. In this direction, 
however, it was difficult of access. The undulating 
reach of grassy meadows, broken by thick hedge- 
rows or copses or tree-crowned knolls, and dotted 
everywhere with oak or elm, which we see in the 
shire of to-day, was at the close of the sixth century 
little more than a vast woodland. Yardley Chase 

1 Even after its break-up into shire land the oneness of the South- 
Gyrwan country was recognized in the fact that there was (at least 
in Camden's time) but one high-sheriff for the whole area. " He 
is chosen out of Cambridgeshire one year, out of the Isle of Ely the 
second, and the third out of Huntingdonshire " (Camden's Britan- 
nia, ed. 1753, i. 502). 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 19: "Venerunt ad civitatulam quandam 
desolatam . . . quae lingua Anglorum Granta-caester vocatur ; et 
mox invenerunt juxta muros civitatis locellum de marmore albo 
pulcherrime factum, operculo quoque similis lapidis aptissime tec- 
tum." 



g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. ii. and the forests of Selsey and Whittlebury are but 
conquests dwindled representatives of a long barrier of copse 
Engie 6 an d thicket that stretched along its southeastern 
c^oo- slopes, and amidst whose fastnesses lay the town 
c.j)70. which is represented by our Towcester. Even as 
late as the Middle Ages the western half of its area, 
from the edge of the Fens as far inland as Rocking- 
ham and Kettering, was still one of the largest for- 
ests of the island; and in earlier days this forest 
had stretched yet further towards the Nen. 1 It was 
through this huge woodland that the Engle from 
the Wash would have to struggle as they mounted 
the upland ; and their progress must have been a 
slow one. Their fellow - invaders from the valley 
of the Soar had an easier task. Along the head- 
waters of the Nen the upland became clearer ; and 
though fragments of woodland such as the oak 
woods that lingered on around Althorpe and Holm- 
by linked Rockingham with the vaster forest of Ar- 
den, and thus carried on the forest line across Cen- 
tral Britain from the Severn to the Wash, yet open 
spaces remained for settlement and communication. 3 
It was across this clearer ground that the Watling 
Street struck after it had mounted from Stony- 
Stratford and emerged from the woods of Whittle- 
bury ; and here it was that the bulk of the new set- 
tlers raised their homes around the " home-town " of 
their tribe, the Hampton which was known in after- 

1 For Rockingham and its forest, see a paper by Mr. G. T. Clark, 
Archseol. Journal, xxxv. 209. 

2 By Elizabeth's day sheep-farming, for which this district was 
renowned, had made this part of the shire " a great open pasture," 
as now. But the woodlands were still thick about Towcester and 
Rockingham (Camden, Britannia, ed. 1753, i. 511). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 8 1 

days as Northampton to distinguish it from the char n. 
South-Hampton beside the Solent. conquests 

While Engle bands were thus pushing up the E ngie. 
Soar to Ratae and the upland which formed the c .~^>_ 
southern brink of the Trent basin, others must have c '_^°- 
been advancing along the great river beyond the The West 
bounds of the Middle English to near its junction 
with the Tame. As they struck to the north up the 
valleys of the Derwent and the Dove into the moor- 
lands of the Peak, these seem to have become known 
as the Pec-saetan ; but their settlement in what was 
the later Derbyshire would necessarily be a scanty 
and unimportant one. Of far greater importance 
was the advance of their fellows to the west. Spread- 
ing along the quiet open meadows beside the Tame, 
the invaders as they fixed their " worth " of Tam- 
worth on a little rise above its waters at their union 
with the Anker, saw the dark and barren moorlands 
of Cannock Chase stretching like a barrier across 
their path. Lichfield, " the field of the dead," may, 
as the local tradition ran, mark the place of some 
fight that left them masters of the ground beneath 
its slopes ; but the Chase itself was impassable. At 
either end of it, however, a narrow gap gave access 
to the country in its rear. Between its northern 
extremity and the Needwood which lay thick along 
the Trent, the space along the channel of the great 
river was widened by the little valley of the Sow. 
Between its southern end and the dark edge of Ar- 
den, which then ran to the north of our Walsall and 
Wolverhampton, interposed a like gap of open coun- 
try through which the Watling Street passed on its 
way to the Severn. By both of these openings the 

6 



8 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

char ii. West Engle, as this folk of conquerors at first called 
conquests itself, pushed into the open tract between Cannock 
Engie. and the low line of moorlands thrown down from 
c.^oo- the heights of Mole Cop in the north, which marks 
c.j570. the water-parting between the basins of the Severn 
and the Trent. Stafford, the " Stone-ford," marks 
their passage over the Sow to the head-waters of the 
great river which had led them through the heart of 
Central Britain, though the woods thrown out from 
Needwood across the district of Trentham must 
have long hindered them from penetrating to its 
northern founts. Here, however, they were brought 
for a while to a stand ; for that these moorlands long 
remained a march or border-land between Engle and 
Welshman we see from the name by which the West 
English became more commonly known, the Mer- 
cians, or the Men of the March. 1 



1 The date of the conquest of Mercia can only be a matter of in- 
ference, as we have no record of any part of the winning of Central 
Britain. Florence of Worcester, ed. Thorpe (vol. i. p. 264) says, " post 
initium regni Cantuariorum principium exstitit regni Merciorum," 
which tells us nothing; but if Penda was (E. Chron. a. 626) fifty 
when he began his reign in 626 (Baeda, ii. 20, seems to put this in 
633), he was born about 576, when we may take it his people were 
already on the upper Trent. This squares with Huntingdon's state- 
ment, " Regnum Merce incipit, quod Crida ut ex scriptis conjicere 
possumus primus obtinuit " ( Hist. Angl. ed. Arnold, p. 53 ), a fact 
which he inserts between Ceawlin's overthrow at Fethanlea in 584 
and his death in 593. Crida, or Creoda, was Penda's grandfather : 
" Penda was the son of Pybba, Pybba of Creoda " (E. Chron. a. 626). 
The setting-up of a king would, no doubt, follow here as elsewhere 
a period of conquest under ealdormen which would carry us back 
to near the middle of the century for the first attack on the head- 
waters of the Trent. The conquests of the Middle Engle would of 
course precede those of the Mercians. We may gather from the 
limits of the bishopric of the Mercians that the Pec-saetan of our 
Derbyshire were only a part of these West Engle. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



83 



CHAPTER III. 

CONQUESTS OF THE SAXONS. 
c. 500-577. 

With the settlement of the Mercians the work Th J West 

Faxons. 

of the Engle in Central and Northern Britain was 
done. But we have still to follow the work of the 
conquerors who through the same memorable years 
had been making themselves masters of the south. 
While the Engle had been winning one flank of the 
Saxon Shore, the Saxons were as slowly winning an 
even more important district on its other flank. 1 To 
westward of the strip of coast between the Andreds- 
weald and the sea which had been won by the war 
bands of ^Ella, the alluvial flat whose inlets had 
drawn the South Saxons to their landing in Chich- 
ester Water broadened into a wider tract around a 
greater estuary, that of the Southampton Water, as 
it strikes inland from the sea-channels of the So- 
lent and Spithead. This opening in the coast was 
already recognized as of both military and commer- 
cial importance. It was the one break in the long 
line of forests which, whether by the fastnesses of 
the Andredsweald or by the hardly less formidable 
fastnesses of our Dorset, stretched like a natural 
barrier along the whole southern coast of Britain ; 

1 From this point we are again on distinctly historic ground, as 
the Chronicle records every step in the conquest of Wessex. 



8 4 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. in. for though woodlands lay even here along the shore, 

conquests it was in a thin line broken by the estuary and by 

Saxons, the channels of its tributaries, and cleft by the roads 

«^T C ™ that run from Winchester to Porchester or alone; the 

C. SOO-077. ° 

— valley of the Itchen. 1 By either estuary or roads it 
was easy to reach the upland of the Gwent, and to 
strike across it into the very heart of Britain. The 
importance of such a point was shown by the reso- 
lute resistance of its defenders ; and the Saxo.ns who 
attacked it during the latter years of the fifth cen- 
tury seem to have failed to make any permanent 
settlement along the coast. The descents of their 
leaders, Cerdic and Cynric, in 495," at the mouth of 
the Itchen, and a fresh descent on Porchester in 
50 1, 3 can have been little more than plunder raids; 
and though in 508 4 a far more serious conflict ended 
in the fall of five thousand Britons and their chief, 
it was not till 514 that the tribe whose older name 
seems to have been that of the Gewissas, but who 
were to be more widely known as the West Saxons, 
actually landed with a view to definite conquest. 5 

Pushing up the Itchen to the plunder of Winches- 
ter, they must have been already masters of the 

1 For these woodlands, see Guest, E. E. Sett. pp. 31, 32. I again 
follow mainly the guidance of this paper, as far as the West-Saxon 
conquests are concerned, up to the battle of Bedford. 

2 E. Chron. a. 495. 

3 E. Chron. a. 501. 

4 E. Chron. a. 508, and Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. ed. Arnold, p. 46, 
who adds that the West Sexe were aided here by the Kentish men 
and South Sexe. 

5 E. Chron. a. 514. My inferences from the entries in the Chron- 
icle are here somewhat different from those of Dr. Guest ; nor have 
I felt justified in adopting his ingenious theory as to the struggle 
of 508. See Guest, E. E. Sett. pp. 55-60. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



85 



downs around it when they turned to clear the Brit- 
ons from the forests in their rear; for a fight at 
Charford on the lower Avon in 519 seems to mark 
the close of a conflict in which the provincials were 
driven from the woodlands whose shrunken remains 
meet us in the New Forest, and in which the whole 
district between the Andredsweald and the lower 
Avon was secured for English holding. 1 The suc- 



CHAP. III. 

Conquests 
of the 
Saxons. 

c. 500-577. 

Conquest 
of Hamp- 
shire and 
Isle of 
Wight. 




cess at Charford was followed by the political organ- 
ization of the conquerors ; and Cerdic and Cynric 
became kings of the West Saxons. 2 Here, however, 



1 E. Chron. a. 519 ; ^Ethelweard, a. 519. 



* E. Chron. a. 519. 



85 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, in. their success came to an end. Across Avon the 
conquests forest belt again thickened into a barrier that held 
Saxons, the invaders at bay ; for when in the following year, 
c. 500^577. 5 2 °' tne y c l° ve their way through it to the valley 
— of the Frome, eager perhaps for the sack of a city 
whose site is marked by our Dorchester, they were 
met by the Britons at Badbury or Mount Badon, 1 
and thrown back in what after-events show to have 
been a crushing defeat. The border-line of our 
Hampshire to the west still marks the point at which 
the progress of the Gewissas was arrested by this 
overthrow ; 2 and how severe was the check is shown 
by the long cessation of any advance in this quarter. 
We hear only of a single battle of the West Sexe 3 
during the rest of the reign of Cerdic; while the 
Jutes who had aided in his descents, and who had 
struck up the Hamble to a clearing along its course 
where the villages of Meon Stoke and West and 
East Meon still preserve a memory of their settle- 
ment of the Meonwara, 4 turned to the conquest of 

1 Gildas, Hist. sec. 26. For the identification of this battle with 
that of Mount Badon, and of its site with Badbury in Dorsetshire, 
see Guest, E. E. Sett. pp. 61-63. 

2 The position of Sorbiodunum, which was still in British hands, 
gives at least one firm standpoint in the question of West-Saxon 
boundaries at this time. The limits which Guest assigns them 
(E. E. Sett. pp. 64, 65) to north and east — reaching as far as the 
Cherwell and Englefield — seem to me inconsistent with their later 
campaigns ; in fact, I can hardly doubt that Hampshire, as a whole, 
represents the West-Saxon kingdom after 520. 

3 E. Chron. a. 527. 

* Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 15 : " De Jutarum origine sunt Cantuarii et 
Vectuarii, hoc est, ea gens quae Vectam tenet insulam, et ea quae 
usque hodie in provincia occidentalium Saxonum Jutarum natio 
nominatur, posita contra ipsam insulam Vectam." Politically the 
Meonwara went with the Isle of Wight, and not with Wessex. See 
Wulfere's grant to yEdilwalch ; Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 13. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



87 



the island that lay off the Solent. In 530 Cerdic and chap. m. 
Cynric subdued the Isle of Wight, but it was in the conquests 
interest not of their own people but of its allies, for s ax0 ns. 
the new settlers of the island, the Wightgara, whose c 5 ^I 577i 
name survives in their town of Carisbrook or Wight- — 
gara-burh, were not West Sexe, but Jutes. 1 Small as 
it was, the conquest was a memorable one ; for with 
it ended for centuries the work of the Jutes in Brit- 
ain. Causes which are hidden from us must have 
diverted their energies elsewhere ; the winning of 
Britain was left to the Saxon and the Engle ; and it 
was not till Britain was won that the Jutes returned 
to dispute it with their old allies under the name of 
the Danes. 2 

But the conquest of the isle had hardly less sig- *!? use °f 
nificance for the West Sexe themselves. If they ohs. 
turned to the sea, it was that landwards all progress 
seemed denied them. Not only had the woodlands 
of the coast proved impassable, but the invaders of 
the Gwent found barriers almost as strong on every 
side. Higher up on their western border the fortress 
of Sorbiodunum, or Old Sarum, guarded the valley 
of the Avon and blocked the way to Salisbury Plain, 
while to eastward of the Gwent ran the thickets of 
the Andredsweald, and beneath its northern escarp- 
ment stretched a forest which for centuries to come 
filled the valley of the Kennet. The strength of 
these natural barriers was doubled by strongholds 
which furnished the Britons with bases for defensive 
operations as well as with supplies of fighting-men ; 
for while Silchester or Calleva barred the march of 

1 See passage quoted above. Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 15. 
3 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 46. 



gg THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. the Gewissas across the tract between the Andreds- 
conquests weald and the Thames, Cunetio, on the site of our 
Saxons. Marlborough, held the downs to the north, and 
c. 500^577 guarded the road that led from Winchester to the 
— Severn valley. How formidable these obstacles were 
we see from the long inaction of the West Saxons. 
While the Engle in the north were slowly fighting 
their way across Yorkshire or Lincolnshire, their 
rivals in the south lay quiet for thirty years within 
the limits of our Hampshire. From the position, in- 
deed, of their central " tun " of Hampton (our South- 
ampton), it would seem as if their main settlement 
was still on the coast, and as if the ruins of Win- 
chester were left silent and deserted in the upper 
downs. 

What broke this inaction — whether the Britons had 
grown weaker, or whether fresh reinforcements had 
strengthened their opponents — we do not know. We 
hear only that Cynric, whom Cerdic's death left King 
of the West Saxons, again took up the work of in- 
vasion in 552 by a fresh advance on the west. 1 Win- 
chester was the meeting-point of five Roman roads ; 
and of these one struck directly westward, along the 
northern skirts of the woodlands that filled the space 
between the lower Itchen and the mid-valley of the 
Avon, to the fortress of Old Sarum. 2 Celt and Ro- 
man alike had seen the military value of the height 
from which the eye sweeps nowadays over the grassy 
meadows of the Avon to the arrowy spire of Salis- 
bury ; and admirable as the position was in itself, it 
had been strengthened at a vast cost of labor. The 

1 E. Chron. a. 552. 

2 See map in Guest's E. E. Settlements in Southern Britain. 



num. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



89 



camp on the summit of the knoll was girt in by a chap. m. 
trench hewn so deeply in the chalk that from the conquests 
inner side of it the white face of the rampart rose a saxonl 
hundred feet high, while strong outworks protected c5 ^ 577 
the approaches to the fortress from the west and from ■ — 
the east. 1 Arms must have been useless against such 
a stronghold as this ; and, though the Britons were 
" put to flight " before its investment, the reduction 
of Sorbiodunum was probably due rather to famine 
or want of water than to the sword. 

But its fall brought with it the easy winning of the Conquest 
district which it guarded, as well as the downs on Wiltshire. 
whose edge stood the strange monument, then as 
now an object of wonder, to which the conquerors as 
they marched beside its mystic circle gave the name 
of the Hanging Stones, Stonehenge. The Gewissas 
passed over the Stratford, or paved ford by which 
the road they had followed from Winchester passed 
the river, to the westernmost reaches of the Gwent, 
the district we now know as Salisbury Plain. To the 
south of them as they marched, behind the lower 
Avon and its little affluent of the Nadder, a broken 
and woodland country whose memory lingers in 
Cranbourne Chase screened the later Dorsetshire 
from their arms ; 2 but in their front the open downs 
offered no line of defence, and the Gewissas could 
push along the road from Old Sarum unhindered 
till they reached the steep slope down which the up- 



1 G. J. Clark, " Earthworks of the Wiltshire Avon," Archaeol. Jour- 
nal, xxxii. 290. 

2 The name of " Britford," which still clings to a passage over the 
Avon in this quarter, may mark a point in the new border-line 
where the Briton still faced his foe. 



g Q THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. land fell into the valley of the Frome. How roughly 
conquests their march was checked at this point by the dense 
saxons. forests which filled the Frome valley we see from the 
c 500^577 f ac t t na t these woodlands remained in British hands 
for more than a hundred years ; and the significant 
name of " Mere " preserves for us the memory of the 
border -bound which the Gewissas were forced to 
draw along the western steeps of their new conquest. 
The conquerors turned back to settle in the land 
they had won — in the river-valleys which scored the 
surface of the downs, in the tiny bends and grassy 
nooks of the vale of Avon, or in the meadows along 
the course of its affluent, the Wil or Wiley. It was 
probably in the last that the main body of the in- 
vaders fixed their home ; for it was the Wiley, and 
the little township, or Wil-ton, which rose beside it, 
which gave them from this time their new name of 
Wil-saetas. From this time, indeed, the Gewissas, 
or West Saxons, felt the need of local names for the 
peoples into which conquest broke them as they 
pushed over the country. But the character of these 
names shows the looseness of the bonds that held 
such " folks " together. Each knew itself simply as a 
group of "saltan," or "settlers," in the land it had 
won — Wilt-saetan in the lands about the Wiley, Dor- 
saetan in the forest tract through which wound the 
" dwr " or dark water of the Frome, Somer-ssetan or 
Defna-saetan in lands yet more to the west. 
Cynric's But there was little to detain Cynric in the tinv 

advance. J . . J 

vales and bare reaches of upland which his arms 
had as yet given him; and in 556, only four years 
after the fall of Old Sarum, he pushed forward again 
along a road that led from Winchester northwest- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. oj 

ward in the direction of Cirencester and the Severn, chap. m. 
Descending the deep escarpment which forms the conquests 
northern face of the Hampshire Downs, he threaded saxons. 
his way through the woodlands of the vale of Pewsey, c 5 ^ 577 
whose relics survive in the forest of Savernake, and — 
again mounted the slopes on the further side of them. 
Here he made himself master of the town of Cunetio 
and of the upland which lay about it by a victory on 
the very brink of the downs at Barbury Hill. 1 The 
ground, however, of which he thus became lord was 
far from affording any obstacle to further advance ; 
on the contrary, its very character seemed to draw 
the Gewissas onward to new aggressions. The 
Marlborough Downs are, in fact, the starting-point 
from which the second and greatest of its chalk 
ranges runs across Southern Britain. The upland 
trends to the northeast under the name of the Ilsley 
Downs till it reaches a gap through which the 
Thames strikes southward to its lower river-valley ; 
then rising again in the Chilterns, it broadens at 
last into the Gwent, in which the East Anglians had 
found a home. In its earlier course this range nat- 
urally called Cynric's men to a fresh advance; for 
from the downs above Marlborough the high ground 
runs on without a break to the course of the Thames. 
This tract, however, like that which they had trav- 
ersed in the Gwent, must have been a scantily peo- 
pled one; and its invaders would turn with eager- 
ness to the more tempting district which lay in the 
lower ground on either side of it. The northern 

1 " Byran-byrig," E. Chron. a. 556 ; Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 67 ; Hunt- 
ingdon, Hist. Angl. ed. Arnold, p. 51, gives large details of this bat- 
tle, but we do not know his authority for them. 



q 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. face of the downs consists of a line of steep cliffs, 
conquests looking out over a vale through which the stream 

nf thfi 

Saxons, of the Ock pours its waters into the Thames. On 
c. 500^577. the face of this escarpment the traveller still sees, 
drawn white against the scanty turf, the gigantic 
form of a horse which gives the vale of White 
Horse its name, and which tradition looks on as a 
work of the conquering Gewissas. Another monu- 
ment of their winning of this district lingers in the 
rude stones called Weyland Smith's House, a crom- 
lech of primeval times where the Saxons found a 
dwelling-place for the weird legend of a hero-smith 
which they brought with them from their German 
homeland. 
Conquest The White Horse o-limmers over a broad and 
Berkshire, fertile region, whose local names recall for us the 
settlement of the conquerors in hamlets that have 
grown into quiet little towns like Wantage, the 
future birthplace of Alfred, or in homesteads that 
crowned the low rises or " duns " which overlooked 
the valley, such as the dun where the Farrings 
planted their Farringdon, or another dun at the 
confluence of the Ock and the Thames, where the 
West Saxon Abba chose the site for a dwelling-place 
which grew in later days into our Abingdon. On 
the south the downs fell in gentler slopes to the 
vale of the Kennet, whose silvery stream ran through 
masses of woodland, past the ford at Hungerford 
and the " new burh " of the conquerors which sur- 
vives in Newbury, to the low and swampy meadows 
where it meets the Thames, as the river bursts from 
its cleft through the chalk range to open out into 
its lower valley. In these meadows the house of 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. g^ 

the Readings planted a settlement which has grown chap, m 
into the busy town that preserves their name. Still conquests 
further to the east the invaders pushed their way saxons. 
into the tangled woodland that stretched along the c 5^577. 
low clay flats which bordered the southern bank of — 
the Thames, and where the predominance of the 
box, or bearroc, may have given in after -days its 
name of " Bearrocshire," or Berkshire, to the whole 
tract of valley and down which this fresh advance 
added to the dominions of the West Saxons. 1 

With its conquest the winning of the southern The valley 
uplands was complete. And with the winning of Thames. 
these uplands the whole island lay open to the 
Gewissas ; for the Andredsweald, which had held 
back the invader for half a century, was turned as 
soon as the West Saxons stood masters of the 
Southern Gwent, and their country now jutted for- 
ward like a huge bastion into the heart of uncon- 
quered Britain. Only on one side were the obstacles 
in their way still serious. The woods of Dorsetshire, 
with the thick wedge of forest which blocked the 
valley of the Frome beneath the Wiltshire Downs, 
were for long years to hold any western advance at 
bay; but elsewhere the land was open to their at- 
tack. On the northwest easy slopes led to the crest 
of the Cotswolds, from whence the Severn valley lay 
before them for their prey. On the north their 
march would find no natural obstacles as it passed 
up the Cherwell valley to penetrate either to the 
central plain of Britain or to the Wash. Above all, 
to the eastward opened before them the valley of 

1 For these woodlands, see Guest's E. E. Sett. p. 32. The Kennet 
valley was not disafforested till the time of Henry the Third. 



o 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, in. the Thames. From its springs near the crest of the 
conquests Cotswolds the river falls quietly to the low ground 
Saxons, beneath the Marlborough Downs, and then turns 
c. 500^577. abruptly to the south to hew a channel through the 
line of chalk uplands, and thus part the Berkshire 
heights from the Chilterns. Once out of this narrow 
gorge, it bends round the woodlands where the ad- 
vanced guard of Cynric's men were feeling their 
way into the fastnesses about Windsor, and, rolling 
in a slower and larger current eastward through the 
wide valley that lies between the north downs and 
the East-Anglian heights, after a course of two hun- 
dred miles it reaches its estuary and the sea. 
its No road can have seemed so tempting to the 

earlier invaders as this water-road of the Thames, 
leading as it did straight from the Channel to the 
heart of Britain through an open and fruitful coun- 
try; and it was by this road that their advance 
seemed destined to be made when they settled 
on either side of its estuary in Essex and in Kent. 
But a century had passed since these settlements, 
and the Thames valley still remained untouched. 
Tempting as the road seemed, indeed, no inlet into 
Britain was more effectually barred. On either side 
the river-mouth, at but little distance from the coast 
on which East Saxon and Kentishman were en- 
camped, long belts of woodland and fen stretched 
to the very brink of the Thames. On the south of 
it the fastnesses of the Weald found their line of 
defence prolonged by huge swamps that stretched 
to the river, and whose memory is still preserved 
by the local names as by the local floods of Rother- 
hithe and Bermondsey. To the north as formidable 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^ 

a line of defence presented itself in the tangled CHAP - m> 
forest whose last relics survive in the woods of conquests 
Epping and in the name of Hainault, and this bar- s ° aX o n l 
rier of woodland was backed by the swamps of the c 5 ^I 577 
lower Lea to the rear of it. The one line of ad- . — 
vance, in fact, open to an invader was the course of 
the Thames itself, and the course of the Thames 
was blocked by the fortress of London. 

The commercial greatness of London has made ^•»^<>/" 
men forget its military importance, but from the first 
moment of its history till late into the Middle Ages 
London was one of the strongest of our fortresses. 
Its site, indeed, must have been dictated, like that 
of most early cities, by the advantages which it pre- 
sented as well for defence as for trade. 1 It stood at 
the one point by which either merchant or invader 
could penetrate from the estuary into the valley of 
the Thames ; and in its earlier days, before the great 
changes wrought by the embankment of the Romans, 
this was also the first point at which any rising 
ground for the site of such a town presented itself 
on either shore of the river. Nowhere has the hand 
of man moulded ground into shapes more strangely 
contrasted with its natural form than on the site. of - 
London. Even as late as the time of Caesar, the soil 
which a large part of it covers can have been little 
but a vast morass. Below Fulham the river stretched 
at high tide over the ground that lies on either side 



1 Rev. W. J. Loftie, " London before the Houses," Macmillan's 
Magazine, xxxiv. 356. To this paper we may add Dr. Guest's re- 
marks on ancient Middlesex in his "Aulus Plautius," Archaeol. 
Journal, xxiii. 159. See, too, Quarterly Review, July, 1880, "Mid- 
dlesex." 



9 6 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. in. 

Conquests 
of the 
Saxons. 

c. 500-577. 



of its present channel from the rises of Kensington 
and Hyde Park to the opposite shores of Peckham 
and Camberwell. All Pimlico and Westminster to 
the north, to the south all Battersea and Lambeth, 
all Newington and Kennington, all Bermondsey and 
Rotherhithe, formed a vast lagoon, broken only by 



EARLY LONDON. 

(Local names around of later date.) 







u „ J ftp* 

Wimbledon Q- 






Stanford's UeogM Eetab*. 



little rises which became the " eyes " and " hithes," 
the "islands" and " landing -rises," of later settle- 
ments. Yet lower down to the eastward the swamp 
widened as the Lea poured its waters into the Thames 
in an estuary of its own — an estuary which ran far to 
the north over as wide an expanse of marsh and fen, 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. o* 

while at its mouth it stretched its tidal waters over chap. m. 
the mud flats which have been turned by embank- conquests 
ment into the Isle of Dogs. 1 Near the point where s ° a f XO ns. 
the two rivers meet, a traveller who was mountine; ~ m 

. Oc. 500-577. 

the Thames from the sea saw the first dry land to — 
which his bark could steer. The spot was, in fact, 
the extremity of a low line of rising ground which 
was thrown out from the heights of Hampstead 
that border the river-valley to the north, and which 
passed over the sites of our Hyde Park and Hol- 
born to thrust itself on the east into the great 
morass. This eastern portion of it, however, was 
severed from the rest of the rise by the deep gorge 
of a stream that fell from the northern hills, the 
stream of the Fleet, whose waters, long since lost in 
London sewers, ran in earlier days between steep 
banks — banks that still leave their impress in the 
local levels, and in local names like Snow Hill — to 
the Thames at Blackfriars. 

The rise or "dun" that stretched from this tidal M>taBrit- 

T^l i town. 

channel of the Fleet to the spot now marked by the 
Tower, and which was destined to become the site 
of London, rose at its highest some fifty feet above 

1 Guest, "Aulus Plautius," Archseol. Journal, xxiii. 179. "When 
the Romans under Aulus Plautius came down the Watling Street 
to the neighborhood of London, they saw before them a wide ex- 
panse of marsh and mud bank, which twice every day assumed the 
character of an estuary sufficiently large to excuse, if not to justify, 
the statement of Dion, that the river there emptied itself into the 
ocean. No dykes then retained the water within certain limits. 
One arm of this great wash stretched northward up the valley of 
the Lea, and the other westward up the valley of the Thames." 
" The name of London refers directly to the marshes, though I can- 
not here enter into a philological argument to prove the fact " 
(p. 180). 

7 



98 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. in. the level of the tide, and was broken into two parts 
conquests by a ravine through which ran the stream which 
Saxons, has since been known as the Wallbrook. Such a 
c 500^577 position was admirably adapted for defence ; it was, 
— indeed, almost impregnable. Sheltered to east and 
south by the lagoons of the Lea and the Thames, 
guarded to westward by the deep cleft of the Fleet, 
it saw stretching along its northern border the broad 
fen whose name has survived in our modern Moor- 
gate, Nor, as the first point at which merchants 
could land from the great river, was the spot less 
adapted for trade. But it was long before the trader 
found dwelling on its soil. Old as it is, London is 
far from being one of the oldest of British cities ; till 
the coming of the Romans, indeed, the loneliness of 
its site seems to have been unbroken by any settle- 
ment whatever. The " dun " was, in fact, the centre 
of a vast wilderness. Beyond the marshes to the 
east lay the forest track of Southern Essex. Across 
the lagoon to the south rose the woodlands of Syden- 
ham and Forest Hill, themselves but advance-guards 
of the fastnesses of the Weald. To the north the 
heights of Highgate and Hampstead were crowned 
with forest masses, through which the boar and the 
wild ox wandered without fear of man down to the 
days of the Plantagenets. Even the open country 
to the west was but a waste. It seems to have 
formed the border-land between two British tribes 
who dwelt in Hertford and in Essex, and its barren 
clays were given over to solitude by the usages of 
primeval war. 1 

1 Guest, "Aulus Plautius," Archaeol. Journal, xxiii. 167: "Merely 
a march of the Catuvellauni, a common through which ran a wide 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. oo 

With the coming of the Roman, however, this sol- CHAP - in. 
itude passed away. 1 We know nothing of the set- conquests 
tlement of the town ; but its advantages as the first saxons. 
landing-place along the Thames secured for it at 5 ^T 577 
once the command of all trading; intercourse with „ — 

/-' ii i /-» i ■ i i • Roman 

Gaul, and through Gaul with the empire at large. London. 
So rapid was its growth that only a few years after 
the landing of Claudius London had risen into a 
flourishing port, the massacre of whose foreign trad- 
ers was the darkest blot on the British rising under 

track-way, but in which was neither town, village, nor inhabited 
house. No doubt the Catuvellauni fed their cattle in the march, 
and there may have been shealings here to shelter their herdsmen." 
" I have little doubt that between Brockley Hill and the Thames all 
was wilderness from the Lea to the Brent." 

1 Guest ("Aulus Plautius," Archaeol. Journal, xxiii. 180) suggests 
the Roman origin of London. " When in the autumn of 43 Aulus 
Plautius drew the lines of circumvallation round his camp, I be- 
lieve he founded the present metropolis of Britain. The notion 
entertained by some antiquaries, that a British town preceded the 
Roman camp, has no foundation to rest upon, and is inconsistent 
with all we know of the early geography of this part of Britain." 
Much has been made of its name, but " Llyn-dyn," or whatever the 
Celtic form may be, is as likely to be the designation of a spot as of 
a town on it. An almost conclusive proof, however, that no such 
town existed west of the Fleet may be drawn from the line of the 
old British road from Kent (the predecessor of the Watling Street), 
which, instead of crossing the river, as in Roman and later times, at 
the point marked by London Bridge, passed, according to Higden, 
to a point opposite Westminster, and, crossing the river there, struck 
north along the line of Park Lane and Edgware Road ( Loftie, 
" Roman London," Archaeol. Journal, xxxiv. 165). Such a course 
is inconsistent with the existence of a town on the site of the later 
London ; in fact, the rise of such a town is the best explanation 
of the later change in the line of this road, which brought about its 
passage by the bridge. 

2 As we have seen, vessels from Gaul simply crossed the Channel 
to Richborough, and avoided the circuit of the north Foreland by 
using the channel of the Wantsum, through which they passed by 
Reculver into the Thames. 



IOO THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. Boadicea. 1 But the town soon recovered from the 
conquests blow. If York became the official capital of the 
saxons. province, London formed its actual centre, for by one 
c 500^577 °^ tne man y advantages of its site it was necessarily 
— the point from which the roads of the conquerors 
radiated over the island. Such a point would natu- 
rally have been found at Richborough, where the line 
of communication with the body of the empire passed 
the Channel at its narrowest part. But Kent, as we 
have seen, was shut in by barriers which made com- 
munication with the rest of the island impracticable, 
save at the single spot where the road, thus drawn 
inland from Richborough, found a practicable pas- 
sage over the Thames. And this spot was at Lon- 
don ; for London was the lowest ground on the tidal 
waters of the river on which it was possible to build 
a bridge ; and, even before a bridge was built, it was 
the lowest ground where passage could be gained by 
a ferry. But once over the river, the difficulty of 
divergence was removed, and it was thus that roads 
struck from London to every quarter of Britain. 2 
As the meeting -point of these roads, the point of 
their contact with the lines of communication be- 
tween the province and the Empire, as well as the 
natural port for the bulk of its trade, which then lay 

1 For " Roman London," we have numerous papers, especially in 
the Archseologia, by Mr. Wright, Sir William Tite, Mr. Taylor, Mr. 
Black, and Mr. Roach Smith, and a separate treatise by the last 
author on " The Antiquities of Roman London." See, too, Mr. 
Loftie's "Roman London," in Archseol. Journal, xxxiv. 164. 

2 Roads such as the Fosse Road or the Icknield Way are of earlier 
than Roman date ; and their direction was determined by very dif- 
ferent social and political circumstances from those of Britain in 
the Roman times (see Guest, " Aulus Plautius," Archaeol. Journal, 
xxiii. 175). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. IOI 

exclusively with the Mediterranean and the Channel, chap. in. 
London could not fail to grow fast in population and conquests 

1,1 .of the 

Wealth. Saxons. 

From the traces of burial, indeed, which we find c 5{ ^T 577 
over part of the ground, it seems almost certain that , — , 

,. . & , ,. Its growth. 

the earlier city was far from extending over the 
whole of the space embraced within the existing 
Roman walls. It is possible that Londinium at 
first only occupied the height to the eastward of the 
Wallbrook, which then .ran in a deep channel to its 
little port at Dowgate, and that its northern bound 
was marked by a trench whose memory survives in 
the name of our " Langbourne " Ward ; while the 
ground to the westward as far as the Fleet was still 
open and used for interments. But buildings soon 
rose over the ground outside these narrow bounds. 
We find traces of villas and pavements stretching 
over the earlier grave-grounds ; and by the close of 
the third century at latest London had spread over 
the whole area of the rise east of the Fleet between 
the Thames and the Moor. It was this London 
that was girt in by the massive walls which were 
probably raised by Theodosius, 1 when the inroads 
of the Picts and the descents of the Saxons first 



1 The ease with which the Frankish soldiers, after the fall of Al- 
lectus, fell back on and plundered London suggests that it was then 
without defence. The reign of Valentinian seems the most proba- 
ble date for raising walls after this time ; and the coins found along 
its course point to the second half of the fourth century. There 
are signs, too, that the wall was raised in some haste, and under the 
pressure of urgent necessity ; for it is carried over cemeteries and the 
sites of existing houses, covering even their encaustic pavements 
in its course ; and fragments of building and sculptures are found 
worked into it. 



I02 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, in. made walls necessary for the security of towns in 
conquests Britain. 

saxons. But the city spread even beyond these wide 

c 500^577 Doun cls. Houses of citizens studded the country 

— around its walls, and bordered the roads which 

Its impor- 
tance, struck westward along the hollow bourne, or Hol- 

born, and northward along our Gracechurch Street. 
Outside the walls, too, lay a ring of burial-places at 
Shoreditch and elsewhere ; while a suburb rose 
across the river on the site of the present Southwark. 
One of the most laborious works of the Roman set- 
tlers was the embankment of the lower channels of 
the Thames and of the Lea; and it w r as on ground 
thus gained from the morass across the river at our 
Southwark that dwellings clustered whose number 
and w r ealth leave hardly a doubt that they were 
already linked by a bridge with the mother city. 1 
Of London itself, however, we know little. Tradi- 
tion places a temple of Diana on the spot where 
the Christian missionaries raised in after -time the 
Church of St. Paul, and here on this higher ground 
some statelier public buildings may have clustered 
round it. But the scarcity of stone and abundance 
of clay in its neighborhood were fatal to any archi- 
tectural pretensions ; and from the character of its 
remains the town seems to have been little more 
than a mass of brick houses and red -tiled roofs, 

1 " When the foundations of the old bridge were taken up, a line 
of coins, ranging from the Republican period to Honorius, were 
found in the bed of the river. . . . The completeness of the series 
can only be accounted for on the supposition that a bridge, pre- 
ceded, perhaps, by a rope or chain ferry, was very early thrown 
across the Thames " (Lottie's " Roman London," Archaeol. Journal, 
xxxiv. 172). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. IO , 

pierced with a net-work of the narrow alleys which chap, m. 
passed for streets in the Roman world, and cleft conquests 
throughout its area by two wider roads from the saxons. 
bridge. One of these led by a gate near our Bish- C 5 ^ 577 
opsgate to the northern road, the other by a line 
which is partly represented in our Cannon Street to 
Newgate and the west. But if it fell far beneath 
many of the British towns in its outer seeming, as 
it fell beneath York in official rank, London sur- 
passed all in population and wealth. Middlesex 
possibly represents a district which depended on it 
in this earlier, as it certainly did in a later, time ; and 
the privileges of the chase, which its citizens enjoyed 
throughout the Middle Ages in the woodland that 
covered the heights of Hampstead and along the 
southern bank of the river as far as the Cray, may 
have been drawn from the rights of the Roman 
burghers. 

In the downfall of the Imperial rule, such a town London 
would doubtless gain a virtual independence ; but invaders. 
through the darkness of the time we catch only a 
passing glimpse of its life, when the Britons, after 
their rout at Crayford, fled from the Jutes to find 
shelter at " Lundenbyryg." ' Its power, however, was 
seen in the arrest of the invaders as they neared its 
southern suburb ; for the western border of Kent 
represents, no doubt, fairly enough the point at which 
the Londoners were able to hold the "Cant-wara" 
at bay on the edge of the morass that stretched 
from Southwark to the Dulwich hills. Hardly were 
these southern assailants brought to a standstill when 

1 E. Chron. a. 457. 



I04 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, hi. London must have had to struggle against assailants 
conquests' on the northern bank of the river. Here, however, 
Saxons, the attack was probably a fainter one. Not only 
c. 500^577 was tne nne °f f° res t and marsh along the lower 
— channel of the Lea impenetrable, but the woodland 
and mud flats of Southern Essex offered little temp- 
tation to the settlers who might have pressed for- 
ward in this quarter. The energies of the East 
Saxons were, in fact, long drawn elsewhere ; for their 
settlements lay mainly in the north of the district to 
which they gave their name, where a clearer and 
more fertile country offered them homes in the val- 
leys of the Colne and the Stour ; and even here 
their numbers must have been too small to push in- 
land, for half a century seems to have elapsed after 
their first settlement before they were strong enough 
to advance from the coast into the interior of the 
island. 
Fail of When the time came for such an advance, it lav 

Verula- . . . J 

mium. naturally up the river-valleys in which they had set- 
tled ; and these led through thinner woodland to a 
point in the downs where Saffron Walden still 
marks an open " dene " that broke the thickets of the 
waste or " Weald." Once on these downs, the East 
Saxons found themselves encamped on the central 
uplands of the line of chalk heights whose extremi- 
ties had already been seized by their brethren in 
Berkshire, and by the Engle in the eastern counties. 
Though the tract was traversed by the great road 
which ran across Mid-Britain from London to Ches- 
ter, the road to which the English gave its later 
name of Watling Street, it was a wild and lonely 
region, whose woodlands, even in the days of the 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



I05 



Norman kings, made travel through it a dangerous ch ap- in. 
business. 1 At this time it probably formed the dis- conquests 
trict of Verulamium, a town which stood near the saxons. 
site of the present St. Albans. Verulamium was c 5 ^r 577i 
one of the oldest towns in Britain ; and, in spite of — 
the wild tract in which it stood, its position on the 
main road from London across Mid- Britain gave it 
a wealth and importance which are still witnessed by 
the traces of an amphitheatre, the extent of its walls, 
and the expanse of ruins from which the abbey and 
abbey-church of later days were mainly construct- 
ed. Since Christianity had become the religion of 
the Empire, it had won celebrity as the scene of the 
martyrdom of a Christian soldier, Alban, who was 
said to have suffered under Diocletian, and whose 
church was a centre of Christian devotion. 2 But 
neither its wealth nor its sanctity saved it from the 
invaders. Its fall was complete ; and for centuries 
to come the broken and charred remains of the town 
were left in solitude without inhabitants. 3 

The fall of Verulamium, and the settlement of its Fail of 
conquerors in the downs about it, must have fallen 
on London as a presage of ruin. A hundred years 

1 Guest, " Four Roman Ways," Archaeol. Journal, xiv. 114. 

2 Gildas, Hist. cap. 10 ; Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 7. 

3 Our only guides to the date of the conquest of Hertfordshire 
are the date of the earlier conquest of Essex, which, as we have seen, 
can hardly have been long before a.d. 500, and that of the fall of 
Verulamium. That Verulamium had fallen before 560 is shown by 
the lament over its ruin in Gildas (Hist. sec. 10) ; but its fall can 
hardly have been much earlier. The bounds of the diocese of Lon- 
don, which represent the kingdom of Essex, show that the Hert- 
fordshire men were part of the East Saxons. The present shire of 
Hertford, however, is far from coinciding in its limits with those of 
the East-Saxon realm or diocese. 



io 6 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. had passed away since Hengest's men had fallen 
conquests back baffled from its neighborhood ; and in the long 

of tho ■ 

Saxons, interval its burghers may have counted themselves 
c. 500^577. sa f e from attack. But year by year the circle of in- 
vasion had been closing round the city. The con- 
quest of Kent had broken its communications with 
the Continent, and whatever trade might struggle 
from the southern coast through the Weald had 
been cut off by the conquest of Sussex. That of 
the Gwent about Winchester closed the road to the 
southwest, while the capture of Cunetio interrupted 
all communication with the valley of the Severn and 
the rich country along its estuary. And now the 
occupation of Hertfordshire cut off the city from 
Northern and Central Britain, for it was over these 
chalk uplands that the Watling Street struck across 
the central plain to Chester and the northwest, and 
it was through Verulamium that travellers bent 
round the forest block above London on their way 
to the north. Only along the Thames itself could 
London maintain any communication with what re- 
mained of Britain; and even this communication 
must have been threatened as the invaders crept 
down the slopes from the north through the wood- 
land which crowned the rises of Hampstead and 
Highgate, or descended by the valleys of the Brent 
and the Colne on the tract which retains their name 
of Middle-Sexe. The settlers in this district, indeed, 
seem to have been unimportant, and the walls of the 
great city were still strong enough to defy any di- 
rect attack. But when once the invading force had 
closed fairly round it, London, like its fellow-towns, 
must have yielded to the stress of a long blockade. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. IQ y 

Although no record remains of its capture or sur- chap. m. 
render, 1 the course of events seems to give the date conquests 
of its fall pretty clearly. It was certainly in English saxons. 
hands by the opening of the seventh century ; ' 2 and c 5^577. 
its fall is the one event which would account for a 
movement of the Kentishmen which we find taking 
place, at the moment which we have reached, along 
the southern bank of the Thames. 3 

Since the death of Hengest, the kingdom of Kent Kent. 
had played no direct part in the conquest of Britain. 
Jutes had, indeed, mastered the Isle of Wight, and 
Jutish houses had joined the Saxon war bands in 
their winning of Southern Britain ; but the Jutish 
kingdom itself had rested quietly within its earlier 
limits between the Channel and the Thames. Under 
the great-grandson of Hengest, however, ^Ethel- 
berht, who was born in the year of the fall of Sor- 
biodunum, and who mounted its throne as a child a 
little later, it again came boldly to the front. 4 Narrow 



1 " Good reasons may be given for the belief that even London 
itself for a while lay desolate and uninhabited " (Guest, " Conquest 
of Severn Valley," Archaeol. Journal, xix. 217). 

2 In 604 it was in the hands of King Saeberct of Essex : " Orienta- 
lium Saxonum . . . quorum metropolis Lundonia civitas est " (Baeda, 
Hist. Eccl. ii. 3). And it passed into those of his sons (ibid. ii. 5). 

3 The settlers in the district west of London are known after- 
wards as the Middle Saxons. But that they were only an offshoot 
of the East Saxons is clear from the fact that, with London, they 
always belonged to the kingdom of Essex, and that Middlesex still 
forms a part of the East-Saxon bishopric of London. 

* The date of yEthelberht's birth is given in the English Chron- 
icle, a. 552 (in the late Canterbury copy). Baeda says that at his 
death, in 616, "regnum . . . quinquaginta et sex annis gloriosissime 
tenuerat" (Hist. Eccl. ii. 5), which fixes his accession in 560. He 
was thus only eight years old when he became king, and sixteen 
when he fought at Wimbledon. 



io 8 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, in. as were its bounds, indeed, Kent equalled in political 

conquests power the wider realms which were forming about 
Saxons, it. It remained, as of old, one of the wealthiest and 

c 500^577. most: flourishing parts of Britain. The ruin of Hen- 
— gest's wars had been in some part repaired by the 
peace which had existed since its conquest a hun- 
dred years ago ; for while the Gwent and the Thames 
valley were still being wasted with fight and ravage, 
the Cant-wara were settling quietly down into busy 
husbandmen along its coast, or on its downs, or in 
the fertile bottoms of the river -valleys that cleft 
them. It was a sign of this tranquillity that the 
district had, even before /Ethelberht's day, resumed 
that intercourse with the Continent which the de- 
scent of the Jutes had for a while broken off; and 
that only a few years later we find men versed in 
the English tongue, the result of a commerce which 
must have again sprung to life ready at hand in the 
ports of Gaul. 1 

Kent and With wealth and strength drawn from a century 
of peace, as well as with the pride which it drew 
from the memory of its earlier share in the conquest 
of Britain, Kent hardly needed any other stimulus 
to nerve it to efforts for a wider sway. But when 
/Ethelberht looked out from his petty realm with 
dreams of sharing in the general advance of his race, 
the boy-king found himself shut in on every side 
save one by English ground. To the southwest lay 
Sussex and the Andredsweald ; to the north, over the 
Thames, lay the land of the East Saxons ; and only 
directly to the west, between the north downs and 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 25. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 1Q g 

the Thames, did any tract of British country offer chap. m. 
itself to his arms. In this quarter the Jutes had comiuests 
been baffled for a hundred years by the barriers in saxons. 
their way, by the wooded fastnesses of the Dulwich c 5( ^7 577 
heights, the tangled swamp which stretched from — 
these heights to the Thames, and the forces which 
would pour from London across its bridge to the 
suburb that occupied the site of the future South- 
wark. From the line of the Medway the West- 
Kentish warriors had crept forward along the strip 
of shore between Blackheath and the Thames, past 
Woolwich and Greenwich, to the edge of this mo- 
rass ; but here the border - line of Kent marks the 
limit of their advance. Nothing but the fall of the 
great city could remove the hindrance from their 
path ; and we can hardly err in believing that it was 
the capture of London by the East Saxons which at 
last enabled the Jutes to force their way across the 
border, and to march in 568 on the tract to the 
west. 1 . 

But i^Ethelberht had hardly struggled through the Westsax- 
marshes and entered on this long- coveted district slkhJster. 
when his progress was again roughly barred. He 
found himself face to face, not with the British, but 
with an English foe ; for the conquests of the West 
Saxons had brought them, as we have seen, to the 
western extremity of the very tract on which yEthel- 
berht was advancing from the east. Their overrun- 
ning of Berkshire and the Marlborough Downs had 
carried them to the border of the Thames valley, 
and the course of the great river led them forward 

1 E. Chron. a. 568. 



I IO 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. in. to the country along its banks. Only one obstacle 

conquests lay in their path. Of the ring of fortresses that en- 

saxons. closed the Gwent, Calleva Atrebatum, the modern 

c 500^577 Silchester, which stood on the edge of the upland 

— where the roads from Winchester and Old Sarum 

united on their way to Lonaon, alone remained in 




British hands. Silchester 1 presented a marked con- 
trast to the towns which the Gewissas had as yet at- 
tacked. The fortresses of the Saxon Shore had 
been built simply as fortresses, and their small walled 
citadels stood apart from the general mass of habita- 

1 For Silchester, see paper by Mr. Joyce, Archaeol. Journal, xxx. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 11Z 

tions near them. In towns such as York, on the chap. m. 
other hand, we see the first military settlement of conquests 
the Roman conquest rising within the earlier walls, sUonl 
but at last so utterly outgrowing them that the bulk c 5 ^I 577 
of the town lay in undefended suburbs, and the walled — 
city contained little more than the quarters of troops 
and officials. Silchester belongs to neither of these 
classes. Originally the seat of a British tribe, its 
position in the heart of the island had deprived it of 
any military importance during the earlier ages of 
the Roman occupation, while it sheltered the town 
from the border forays that alone broke the Roman 
peace. It was not till the decay of the Empire 
brought trouble at last to its gates that inland towns, 
such as Calleva, were compelled to seek shelter in a 
ring of walls, and within these walls the whole town 
was naturally enclosed. It is this cause which ac- 
counts for the disproportion between the walled area 
of one town and another in Roman Britain, between 
the few acres enclosed by the walls of York and the 
space enclosed by the walls of Silchester or London. 
The circuit of the walls of Silchester is about three 
miles round ; and their irregular and polygonal form, 
if we compare it with the regular quadrangle of 
■Richborough or Lincoln, shows that Calleva was a 
fortified city, and not a city which had grown up 
within or around a fortress. Mutilated and broken 
down as it is, the wall, with the wide ditch that still 
partially encircles it, enables us to realize the mili- 
tary strength of the town. In the midst of its net- 
work of narrow streets lay a central forum, round 
which stood the public offices and principal shops of 
the place ; while one side was wholly occupied by a 



II2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. huge basilica, or justice-hall, whose central nave was 

conquests sustained by two rows of stately Corinthian pillars, 
saxons. and closed at each end by a lordly apse. Remains 

c. 500^577 sucn as these show that the Roman tradition was 
— still strong among the citizens of Calleva ; and it may 
have been with the Roman eagle at their head, and 
in the Roman order, that its men marched against 
the West Saxons. But all was in vain. We know 
nothing of the rout of the burghers, or of the siege 
and ruin of their town. It is only the discovery of 
a legionary eagle, hidden away, as it would seem, in 
some secret recess, and there buried for ages be- 
neath the charred wreck of one of its houses, that 
tells its own pathetic tale of the fall of Silchester. 1 

Battk of The fall of this city opened to the West Saxons 

Wimble- £ • i i i • 

don. the road to the westy Joy its capture they had, in 
fact, turned the flank of the Andredsweald. The 
impenetrable tract whose scrub and forest and clay 
bottoms had so long held the assailants of Southern 
Britain at bay lay between the two lines of chalk 
uplands, the south downs , and the north downs, 
which diverged from the Gwent, on which the West 
Saxons had stood so long. But the capture of Cal- 
leva brought them fairly round the extremity of the 
Andredsweald, and opened for them the tract that 
lay between the north downs and the Thames. 
From Silchester a road led through the heart of this 
tract to the south of the Bearrocwood, which rilled 
the bend of the river about Windsor, traversed the 
wild heaths of Bagshot — then, as for ages later, a 
lonely stretch of heather and sand — and, dipping into 

1 Joyce, " Silchester," Archaeol. Journal, xxx. 25. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ! ! -, 

the marshes that still leave their trace on the see- chap.mii. 
nery about Weybridge, pushed through the thick conquests 
woodlands which hid the gentle windings of the saxons. 
lower Mole 1 till it reached a little town which oc- c . 5 ^I 577- 
cupied the site of our Kingston. 2 Here the road — 
crossed the Thames by a ferry, to strike along its 
northern bank towards London ; and that the West 
Saxons made no attempt to follow its course across 
the river adds force to the supposition that the city 
and the district about it were already in English 
hands. 3 But even in the country between the 
Thames and the downs their way was barred by 
an English rival. Right in their path, as they lay 
at Kingston, stretched the low rise of a broad, open 
heath, which extended from the river's brink at Put- 
ney 4 to the height or dun which was to be known 
from some later settler as Wibba's dun, or Wimble- 
don. The heath was studded with barrows that 
marked it as the scene of earlier conflicts ; and an 
older entrenchment, which covered seven acres of its 
surface, may have been occupied by the forces under 
./Ethelberht. But a century of peace had left the 
Jutes no match for veterans who were fresh from the 
long strife about the Gwent. The encounter of 568 
was memorable as the first fight of Englishmen with 

1 The local names show how thickly this district was wooded. 

2 Numerous remains have been found, which prove that a Roman 
station existed at Kingston. 

3 That they had no objection to crossing the river in itself is clear 
from the fact that they crossed it but a few years later into the ter- 
ritory of the Four Towns. This was British soil ; and had our 
Middlesex been British soil, they would as naturally have crossed 
at Kingston. 

4 The older form of this name, Putten-heath, tells its own tale. 



II4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap^iii. Englishmen on British soil ; ' but the day went 
Conquests against the young Kentish king : his army was 
Saxons, thrown back across the Wandle on its own border, 
c. 500^577. an d the disputed district, the Surrey of after-days,' 
became from that moment a land of the West 
Saxons. 
TownT Only one portion of the Thames valley now re- 
mained in British hands, the tract along its northern 
bank from the Chilterns to the Cotswolds ; and it 
was into the heart of this district that the West- 
Saxons penetrated as soon as they had mastered 
Surrey. Close over against their settlements in 
Berkshire lay a region which was subject to four 
British towns, now known to us only by their later 
names of Eynsham, Bensington, Aylesbury, and Len- 
borough, the last of these a small hamlet near the 
present Buckingham. 2 The district comprised, in 
fact, the valleys of the Thame and the Cherwell, as 
well as of a few streams yet further to the westward, 
such as the W T oodrush, the Evenlode, and the Lech ; 
while to northward it stretched across the bounds 
of the Thames basin into the basin of the Wash, and 
reached in a narrow strip to the Ouse. It lay within 
a natural framework of river and woodland that 
marked it off from the rest of Britain. On the east- 
ern side ran the escarpment of the Chilterns, whose 
chalk downs were covered with scrub and brush- 
wood as well as broken with deep bottoms, which 
made them for hundreds of years to come almost 
impenetrable to an army, and which effectually shel- 
tered this tract from any aggression on the part of 

1 E. Chron. a. 568. 2 E. Chron. a. 571. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



115 



the Middle Saxons. To the west, between the dis- chap, m. 
trict of the Four Towns and the slopes of the Cots- conquests 
wolds, ran a line of woodlands and marshes that saxons. 
have left their traces in Wychwood and Canbury c> 5 ^jl 5rr< 
Forest, and in the tangled and difficult channels of 
the streams which drain them. These lines of de- 
fence drew together to the northward, and were 
linked by the woodlands about Towcester and the 
marshy meadows of the Ouse ; while along the south- 
ern border of the district ran the Thames, then a 
deeper and more rapid river than now, guarded 
from near the site of the present Oxford to that of 
Abingdon by almost impenetrable woods, and along 
the bend from Goring to Henley by the fastness of 
the Chiltern hills. 

As one looks westward from the Chilterns now-^«>&- 
adays over Aylesbury Vale, the district of the Four 
Towns stretches away in undulating reaches of green 
meadow-land, dotted with hamlets and homesteads 
that nestle beneath copses and tree-clumps, the clay 
bottom of some primeval sea out of which low lifts 
of oolite rise at Aylesbury and Brill. Then, as now, 
the country was fertile and well peopled. The river 
Thame, which flows through the heart of it, gathers 
its waters from the Chiltern slopes, and, running 
westward till it passes the little town to which it 
gives its name, turns from that point abruptly to 
the south by Chalgrove Field to the Thames. On 
the upper waters of the stream lay a town which is 
represented by our Aylesbury, crowning with the 
church, or Egiwys, 1 to which it possibly owed its 

1 Another derivation is from ^Egil, the sun-archer of Teutonic 
mythology. 



n6 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. English name, a low rise of oolite that commanded 
conquests the district from the base of the Chilterns as far as 
saxons. the town of Thame. A line running close beside 
c 500^577 Thame marks the present shire line between Buck- 
— ingham and Oxfordshire, as it may then have marked 
the boundary between the territory that owned the 
rule of Aylesbury and that which owned the rule of 
Bensington. The district of this last town would 
thus comprise the lower valley of the Thame, with 
the country along the Thames, into which it falls, 
from the edge of the Chilterns to its bend north- 
ward towards Oxford, and would cover much the 
same ground as the southeastern portion of the 
present Oxfordshire. The western portion of the 
same county seems to be coextensive with the dis- 
trict of Eynsham, the country of the Cherwell val- 
ley from Banbury to Oxford, a district bounded 
westward by the woods and marshes of the present 
Gloucestershire border, parted from that of Bensing- 
ton perhaps by the rise of Shotover, and touching 
the districts of Aylesbury and Buckingham to the 
east in an irregular line, of which Brill may have 
been an outpost. The district of Lenborough or 
Buckingham, which lay along the Ouse to the north 
of its three confederates, possibly reached eastward 
as far as the quiet meadows of Cowper's Olney and 
the limits of Bedford, and was bounded in other di- 
rections by the territories of Towcester and Ayles- 
bury. 1 

1 I have been guided, in tracing these boundaries, by the lie of the 
ground itself, and what we know of its natural features at this time, 
as well as by the limits of the actual shires. But a more careful 
examination of the local "dykes," etc., is needed before one can 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. n y 

It was from the south that the West Saxons struck chap. m. 
this country of the Four Towns. The conquests of conquests 
Cynric had planted them, as we have seen, on the saxons. 
Ilsley and Marlborough Downs ; in other words, on c 5 ^T 577< 
the westernmost portion of the chalk range that, ~ 
starting from the Gwent of Hampshire, runs by icknieid 
these downs and the Chilterns to the uplands of 
East Anglia. Along the base of the slopes in which 
this range fronts the lower country to the north ran 
one of the earliest lines of British communication. 
Its name of the Icknieid Way connects this road 
with the Iceni, whom the Romans found settled in 
our Norfolk and Suffolk, and points back to days 
in which this tribe stood supreme in Southeastern 
Britain, and when the road served as their line of 
traffic and of military communication with the Gwent 
of Hampshire and the mining district of Cornwall. 1 
Seldom climbing to the crest of the down, and equal- 
ly avoiding the deep bottoms beneath the slopes of 
the escarpment, its course recalls a time when the 
wayfarer shrank equally from the dangers of the 
open country and from the thickets and marshes 
which made the lower grounds all but impassable. 

arrive at more than probable conclusions on the subject. It is 
needful, too, to bear in mind that the shires of this district probably 
owe their actual form to administrative arrangements of the tenth 
century ; and that though they may have preserved the boundaries 
of older tribal divisions, they do not everywhere exactly coincide 
with them. Thus, part of the present Hertfordshire, as the dio- 
cesan limits show, belonged originally to the district of the Four 
Towns, and remained West Saxon till the establishment of the 
Danelagh. Bedfordshire, again, is made up of more than the dis- 
trict of the " Bedecanford " of Cuthwulf 's day. 

1 For the Icknieid Way, see Guest, " Four Roman Ways," Archaeol. 
Journal, xiv. 109. 



Ug THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. The road long remained one of the main thorough- 
conquests fares of the island ; pilgrims from the west traversed 
s°axons. it throughout the Middle Ages on their way to the 
z^r^ shrine of St. Edmund at Bury; and but two cen- 

C. OUU-077. t J 

— turies ago lines of pack-horses carried along it bales 
of woollen goods from the manufacturing towns of 
the eastern counties. 
B Bedfo7°d ^ was a l° n g the Icknield Way, therefore, that the 
West Saxons would naturally have pushed into the 
heart of the island. But their advance had been 
brought to a standstill by a sudden gap in the line 
of heights — the gap through which the Thames, turn- 
ing abruptly to the south, cuts its way through the 
downs to its lower valley and the sea. It was this 
obstacle of the great river which had bent them to 
their march along its southern bank and their con- 
quest of Surrey. But Surrey once won, their ad- 
vance along the line of the chalk downs was re- 
sumed ; and the barrier of the river was forced at a 
spot whose name preserves for us the memory of 
the invaders. Just before the Thames enters the 
gap beneath the Chilterns, the Icknield Way crossed 
it by a ford, which was recognized for a thousand 
years as the main pass across the river. Here prob- 
ably the -Romans first crossed into Mid- Britain, and 
it was by the same point that the Norman con- 
queror made his way after Hastings into the heart 
of the island. W T ith the single exception, indeed, of 
Halliford, near the Conway Stakes, this was the low- 
est point in its course in which the Thames, under 
its then tidal conditions, could be forded at all. 1 It 

1 Guest, " Campaign of Aulus Plautius," Archseol. Journal, xxiii. 
163, 165, 175. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



119 



was by this ford, the Wallingford, or Ford of the chap^ii. 
Wealhas 2 or Welshmen, as the conquerors called it, conquests 
that the West Sexe must have passed the river in saxonl 
5 7 1. 2 Their leader was Cuthwulf, another son of c 5( ^7 g77 
Cynric, a brother of Ceawlin and Cutha, eager, it 
may be, to rival the achievements of his father and 
brother in war. Of the events of this campaign, 
however, we know but one, the battle with which it 
closed. From the spot at which it was fought, it 
seems as if Cuthwulf's raid had carried him from 
Wallingford by the Icknield Way along the western 
slope of the Chilterns as far as Bedford before the 
forces of the Four Towns could gather at the news 
of the foray, intercept him as he fell back from the 
valley of the Ouse, and force him to an engagement. 3 
But whatever were the circumstances which brought 
about the battle, victory fell, as of old, to the free- 
booters, and the success of Cuthwulf's men was fol- 
lowed by the ruin of the Four Towns of the league. 

The last raid of the West Saxons had brought Halt of 

West Sax- 

them to the verge of Mid- Britain. That they paused om. 
at this point in their advance to the north, and that 
the upper Ouse at Bedford remained the boundary 
of their conquests in this quarter, may probably be 
explained, like their previous turning -away from 
London, by the fact that the country which they 
had reached was already in the hands of English- 



1 It was by this name, which means " strangers," or " unintelli- 
gible people," that the English knew the Britons; and it is the 
name by which the Britons, oddly enough, now know themselves. 

2 " The name of the earlier conquerors still lives in the neighbor- 
ing Englefield " (Freeman, Norman Conquest, iii. 542). 

3 E. Chron. a. 571 ; Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 71. 



120 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap^iii. men. No written record, indeed, fixes the dates of 

conquests the winning of Central Britain ; but the halt of 

saxons. Cuthwulf is a significant one. In the years that 

c. 500^577. followed the victory of 571 the West Saxons must 

have spread over the country they had won, over an 

area which roughly corresponds to that of the shires 




EAST 

BRITAIN 

Roman names VERULAMIUM 
English AEGELES BURH 

Modern Gnihnmichestar 

Cr-}),-^, Euplish Miies 



a ^ u: ia. 

Stanford* Geographical EstabU 



of Oxford, Bedford, and Bucks. To the eastward, 
therefore, their settlements were pushed along the 
clay flats of the upper Ouse, along the valley which 
lies between the chalk ranges of the Chilterns and 
the oolitic upland of our Northamptonshire. On 
the Chilterns, as we know, the East Saxons had for 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. J2I 

some while been settled about Hertford ; but that chap. m. 
the West Sexe made no effort to push further to the conquests 
east can only be explained by the presence of other gaxons. 
Englishmen in that quarter. No natural obstacles c 5( ^7 577 
arrested their march along the Ouse ; neither forest — 
nor hill forced them to halt at the point in its course 
which is marked by the little town of St. Neots, or 
to draw their border-line from it along such lines as 
the little stream of the Kym. 1 We can only account 
for such a halt by supposing that, across this border- 
line on the course of the lower Ouse, the ground 
which now forms our Huntingdonshire had been 
occupied before 571 by the Engle folk whom we 
find in later days settled there. 

That the Ensile were at the same time masters of At i ack on 

& _ Severn 

the upland which stretched like a bar across Cuth- vaUe y- 
wulf's Road to the north is less certain ; for in this 
quarter, as we have seen, the dense screen of forests 
along the southern slopes of Northamptonshire might 
of themselves have held the West Saxons at bay. 
But the conquest of the Trent valley must now have 
been going on ; and the presence of Englishmen on 
the northern upland is the best explanation of the 
sudden wheel which the West Saxons now made to 
the west. Directly westward, indeed, they were still 
not as yet to press ; for the woods of Dorsetshire 
baffled them, and those of the Frome valley long 
proved a protection to the Britons of Somerset. 
Nor, for reasons we are less able to discover, did 
they push up the oolitic slopes from our Oxford- 

1 I do not rely wholly on the fact of the present shire line ; for 
here language serves as a more definite boundary. Bedfordshire 
men still speak a Saxon, Huntingdon and Northamptonshire folk 
speak an Engle, dialect. 



122 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. in. shire to the brow of the Cotswolds, where the town 
conquests of Corinium challenged their arms. It may have 



of the 



Saxons, been that the tangled streams, the woodlands, and 
c. 500^577. tne P ass over ^ e Thames at Lechlade, which pro- 
— tected this district, were still held too strongly by 




Stanford* Geographical Estabt 



the forces of the city. But on their northwestern 
border, in the interval between these lines of attack, 
lay a third line which was guarded by no such bar- 
riers, the line of the lower Severn valley, and it was 
on this tract that the West Sexe poured from the 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 12 % 

Wiltshire Downs in 577. 1 The country was richer chap. m. 
than any they had as yet traversed. Nowhere do conquests 
the remains of both private and public buildings saxons. 
show greater wealth and refinement than at Corin- c 5( ^ 577 
ium, the chief town of the Cotswolds, which stood 
on the site of our Cirencester, and which was sur- 
passed in wealth and importance among its fellow- 
towns only by York, London, and Colchester. 2 Be- 
low the Cotswolds, in the valley of the Severn, Gle- 
vum, the predecessor of our Gloucester, though small- 
er in size, was equally important from its position at 
the head of the estuary, and from its neighborhood 
to the iron-works of the forest of Dean. Less than 
these in extent, but conspicuous from the grandeur 
of its public buildings, Bath was then, as in later 
times, the fashionable resort of the gouty provincial. 
Its hot springs were covered by a colonnade which 
lasted down to almost recent times ; and its local 
deity, Sul, may still have found worshippers in the 
lordly temple whose fragments are found among its 
ruins. 3 The territory of the three towns shows their 
power, for it comprised the whole district of the 
Cotswolds and the lower Severn, with a large part of 
what is now Northern Somersetshire. It stretched, 
therefore, from Mendip on the south as far north- 
ward as the forest which then covered almost the 
whole of Worcestershire. This fertile district was 

1 As to this inroad, I follow, in the main, Dr. Guest's paper, " On the 
English Conquest of the Severn Valley," Archaeol. Journal, xix. 195. 

2 Guest, " Conquest of Severn Valley," Archaeol. Journal, xix. 
195. For Corinium, see paper by Mr. Tucker, Archaeol. Journal, 
vi. 321. The modern Cirencester "does not occupy more than one 
third of the area of the Roman city." 

3 The Roman remains at Bath have Been described by Mr. Scarth 
in numerous papers, some of which may be found in the Proceed- 
ings of the Somerset Archaeological Society. 



I2 a THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. in. thickly set with the country-houses and estates of 
conquests the wealthier provincials. On either side of a road 
saxons. that runs through the heart of it, from Cirencester 
c 500^577 to Aust Passage over the Severn, as well as along 
— the roads which linked the three cities together, 
these mansions stood thickly ; and that of Wood- 
chester is, perhaps, the largest and most magnificent 
whose remains have as yet been found in Britain. 1 
Two courts, round which ran the farm buildings 
and domestic buildings of the house, covered an 
area five hundred feet deep and three hundred broad. 
Every colonnade and passage had its tessellated 
pavement ; marble statues stood out from the gayly 
painted walls ; while pictures of Orpheus and Pan 
gleamed from amid the fanciful scroll-work and fret- 
work of its mosaic floors. 
Battle of it W as from houses such as these, and from the 
three cities to which they clung, that the army gath- 
ered which met the West Saxons under Ceawlin as 
they pushed over the Cotswolds into the valley of 
the Severn. But the old municipal independence 
seems to have been passing away. The record of 
the battle in the Chronicle of the conquerors con- 
nects the three cities with three kings ; and from 
the Celtic names of these kings, Conmael, Condidan 
or Kyndylan, and Farinmael, we may infer that the 
Roman town party, which had once been strong 
enough to raise Aurelius to the throne of Britain, 
was now driven to bow to the supremacy of native 
chieftains. 2 It was the forces of these kings that 
met Ceawlin at Deorham, a village which lies north- 

1 Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, pp. 229-240. 

2 E. Chron. a. 577. Guest, " Conquest of Severn Valley," Archseol. 
Journal, xix. 194. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. l2 $ 

ward of Bath on a chain of hills overlooking the CHAP - *"• 
Severn valley, and whose defeat threw open the conquests 
country of the three towns to the West-Saxon arms, saxons. 
Through the three years that followed, the invaders c 5 ^ 77# 
must have been spreading over the district which 
this victory made their own. Westward, if Welsh 
legend is to be trusted, their forays reached across 
the Severn as far as the Wye. 1 To the south they 
seem to have pushed across the Avon past the site 
of the future Bristol, and over the limestone mass of 
Mendip, whence they drove off in flight the lead- 
miners who have left their cinder- heaps along its 
crest, till they were checked in their progress by the 
marshes of Glastonbury. 2 In the southwest they 
were unable to dislodge the Britons from the forest 
of Braden, the woodland that filled the Frome val- 
ley; and this wedge of unconquered ground ran up 
for the next hundred years into the heart of their 
territory. But in the rich tract along the lower 
Severn which the site of their victory overlooked 
their settlements lay thick. Here, in the present 
Gloucestershire and Worcestershire, the settlers bore 
the name of the Hwiccas, 3 a name which took a yet 

1 Guest, " Conquest of Severn Valley," Archaeol. Journal, xix. 
195. 

2 Guest, "Welsh and English in Somerset," Archaeol. Journal, 
xvi. 109-117. 

3 Theodore set the "bishop of the Hwiccas" at Worcester; and 
his diocese included both the counties of Worcester and Gloucester 
as well as the adjacent districts. This seems to prove that " Hwic- 
can " was the older name for the settlers along the whole of the 
lower Severn, the Cotswolds above it, and Southern Warwickshire ; 
and Florence (a. 897) places Cirencester " in meridionali parte Wic- 
ciorum " — which would confirm this. Earle, "Local Names of 
Gloucestershire," Archaeol. Journal, xix. 51, 52, connects the name 



126 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. in. wider range as from the valley of the Severn the in- 
conquests vaders spread over the upland of the Cotswolds to 
saxons. settle round the fallen Corinium, and found homes 
b 500^577 a l° n g the southern skirts of the forest of Arden. 



with our Wychwood, spelled in 841 " Hwicce-wudu," and which, 
though in Oxfordshire, is within a short distance of Gloucestershire, 
and marks the water-shed between the Severn and the Thames. He 
seems, however, to limit the Hwiccas to Gloucestershire, and to 
give Worcestershire to the Magesaetas, whom Mr. Freeman places 
in Herefordshire and Shropshire (Norman Conquest, i. 561). 




Staiiferd't Gecjraphicat Eitaiif 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



127 



CHAPTER IV. 

THE SETTLEMENT OF THE CONQUERORS. 

With the battle of Deorham and the winning of The age of 

settlement, 

the lower Severn valley, we enter on a new age of 
our history. The conquest, indeed, was far from 
being complete ; for when Ceawlin paused in his ca- 
reer of victory, half the island still remained un- 
conquered, and the border-line of the invaders ran 
roughly along the rise that parts the waters of Brit- 
ain, from Ettrick across Cheviot, along the Yorkshire 
moors to the Peak of Derbyshire, thence by the 
skirts of Arden to the mouth of Severn, and across 
the estuary of that river, by Mendip, through the 
woods of Dorset to the sea. But the country within 
this line comprised all that was really worth win- 
ning, for the wild land to westward and northward 
had little to tempt an invader. Though the tide of 
invasion, therefore, still crept on, it crept on slowly 
and uncertainly ; and from this time the - energies of 
the conquerors were mainly absorbed, not in winning 
fresh land, but in settling in the land they had won. 
We pass, then, from an age of conquest to an age of 
settlement. But, dim as was the light that guided 
us through much of our earlier story, it is bright be- 
side the darkness that wraps the first upgrowth of 
English life on British soil. No written record tells 
us how Saxon or Engle dealt with the land he had 



I2 g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. made his own ; how he drove out its older inhabi- 
The settle- tants, or how he shared it among the new ; how the 

thereon- settlers settled down in township or thorpe, or how 

querors. they moulded into shape, under changed conditions, 
the life they had brought with them from German 
shores. Even legend and tradition are silent as to 
their settlement. It is only by help of the few 
traces of this older life which remains embedded in 
custom or in law, or in later verse, that we can sketch 
its outlines, and such a sketch must necessarily be 
dim and incomplete. 

Weakness ^he character of the settlement was in great 

of English _ # 

attack, measure determined by that of the conquest itself; 
as that of the conquest was determined by the main 
characteristics which distinguished the winning of 
Britain from the winning of the other Western prov- 
inces of the Empire. The first of these was the 
comparative weakness of the attack. Nowhere had 
the barbaric force been so small or its onset so fit- 
ful. Difficulties of transport made attack by sea 
less easy than attack by land ; and the warriors who 
were brought across the Channel or the German 
Ocean by the boats of Hengest and Cerdic must 
have been few beside the hosts who followed Alboin 
or Chlodowig over the .Alps or the Rhine. The 
story of the conquest confirms the English tradition 
that the invaders of Britain landed in small parties, 
and that they were only gradually reinforced by 
after-comers. Nor was there any joint action among 
the assailants to compensate for the smallness of 
their numbers. 1 Though all spoke the same lan- 

1 Stubbs, Constit. Hist. i. 67. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



129 



guage and used the same laws, they had no such CHAP - IV - 
bond of political union as the Franks; and, though The settie- 
all were bent on winning the same land, each band the c<m- 
and each leader preferred their own separate course querors - 
of action to any collective enterprise. 

A second and vet more momentous characteristic stubborn- 

J .... iiess of the 

was the stubbornness of the defence. It is this, in- defence. 
deed, which above all distinguished the conquest of 
Britain from that of other provinces of Rome. In 
all the world-wide struggles between Rome and the 
Germanic races, no land was so stubbornly fought 
for or so hardly won. In Gaul the Frank or the 
Visigoth met little native resistance save from the 
peasants of Brittany or Auvergne. No popular re- 
volt broke out against the rule of Odoacer or The- 
odoric in Italy. But in Britain the invader was met 
by a courage and tenacity almost equal to his own. 
So far as we can follow the meagre record of the 
conquerors, or track their advance by the dykes and 
ruins it left behind it, every inch of ground seems 
to have been fought for. Field by field, town by 
town, forest by forest, the land was won ; and as 
each bit of ground was torn away from its defenders 
the beaten men sullenly drew back from it, to fight 
as stubbornly for the next. 

But there was yet a third characteristic of the Nature of 
conquest which told on the after- settlement, and try. 
this was the way in which the struggle was influ- 
enced by the nature of the conquered country itself. 
It is impossible to follow the story of its winning 
without being struck by the natural obstacles which 
the province presented to an invader. Elsewhere 
in the Roman world the work of the conqueror was 

9 



I3 o THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. aided by the very civilization of Rome. Vandal and 
The settle- Goth marched along Roman highways, over ground 
™e%m- cleared by the Roman axe, as they crossed river or 
querors. ravme n the Roman bridge. To a great extent it 
was so in Britain. But though Britain had been Ro- 
manized, she had been less Romanized than any other 
province of the West; and the material civilization 
of the island was yet more backward than its social 
civilization. The mere forest belts which remained 
over vast stretches of country formed mighty bar- 
riers — barriers which were everywhere strong enough 
to check the advance of an invader, and sometimes 
strong enough to arrest it. The Jutes and the 
South Saxons were brought wholly to a standstill 
by the Andredsweald. The East Saxons never 
pierced the woods of their western border. The 
Fens proved impassable to the East Angles. It was 
only after a long and terrible struggle that the West 
Saxons could hew their way through the forests that 
girt in the Gwent of the southern coast, and in the 
height of their power they were thrown back from 
the forests of Cheshire. 
The Brit- Under such conditions, the overrunning of Britain 
ons riven QQU ^ not f a jj tQ k e a yer y different matter from the 

rapid and easy overrunning of such countries as 
Gaul. Instead of quartering themselves quietly, 
like their fellows abroad, on subjects who were glad 
to buy peace by obedience and tribute, Engle and 
Saxon had to make every inch of Britain their own 
by hard fighting. Instead of mastering the country 
in a few great battles, they had to tear it bit by bit 
from its defenders in a weary and endless strife. 
How slow the work of English conquest was may 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



131 



be seen from the fact that it took nearly thirty years chap^iv. 
to win Kent alone, and sixty to complete the con- The settle- 
quest of Southern Britain, while the conquest of the the con- 
bulk of the island was only wrought out after two qaerors - 
centuries of bitter warfare. But it was just through 
the length of the struggle that, of all the German 
conquests, this was the most thorough and complete. 
That of France by the Franks, or that of Italy by 
the Lombards, proved little more than a forcible 
settlement of the one or the other among tributary 
subjects who were destined in a long course of ages 
to absorb their conquerors. French is the tongue, 
not of the Frank, but of the Gaul whom he over- 
came ; and the fair hair of the Lombard is all but 
unknown in Lombardy. But almost to the close of 
the sixth century the English conquest of Britain 
was a sheer dispossession of the conquered people ; 
and, so far as the English sword in these earlier 
days reached, Britain became England 1 — a land, that 
is, not of Britons, but of Englishmen. 

There is no need to believe that the clearing of , Not . 

s laugh- 

the land meant the general slaughter of the men tared. 
who held it, or to account for such a slaughter by 
supposed differences between the temper of the 
English and those of other conquerors. Fierce and 
cruel as they may have been, the picture which 
Gregory of Tours gives us of the Franks hinders 
us from believing that Englishmen were more fierce 
or cruel than other Germans who attacked the Em- 
pire. Nor is there more ground for the assertion 2 

1 I use the word only by anticipation. The name " England " it- 
self is not found before the days of Eadgar and Dunstan. 

2 Freeman, Norman Conquest, i. 20. 



j„ THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. that they were utterly strange to the Roman civil- 
ize settle- ization ; indeed, the mere presence of Saxon vessels 
Se^cm- in the Channel for a hundred years before their 
querors. descent upon Britain must have familiarized its in- 
vaders with what civilization was to be found in the 
provinces of the West. It was not the temper of 
the conquerors that gave its character to the con- 
quest of Britain so much as the temper of the con- 
quered. The displacement of the conquered people 
was only made possible by their own stubborn re- 
sistance, and by the slow progress of the conquerors 
in the teeth of it. Slaughter, no doubt, there was 
on the battle-field or in towns like Anderida, whose 
long defence woke wrath in their besiegers. But, 
for the most part, the Britons cannot have been 
slaughtered ; they were simply defeated, and drew 
back. 
Proofs of The proofs of such a displacement lie less in iso- 
drlwai of lated passages from chronicle or history than in the 
the om! U broad features of the conquest itself. 1 When Hen- 
gest landed in Thanet, he found Britain inhabited 
by a people of Celtic and Roman blood, a people 
governed by Celtic or Roman laws, speaking the 
Welsh or Latin tongue, still sharing to a great ex- 
tent the civilization and manners of the Empire 
from which they had parted, and at least outwardly 
conforming to the Christian faith which that Em- 
pire professed. The outer aspect of the land re- 
mained that of a Roman province ; it was guarded 
by border fortresses ; it was studded with peopled 
cities ; it was tilled by great landowners whose villas 

1 Stubbs, Constit. Hist. i. 70. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^3 

rose proudly over the huts of their serfs. But when chap, iv. 
Ceawlin turned from the battle-field of Deorham, the The settie- 
face of the Britain that lay behind him was utterly thecon- 
changed. So far as the English or Saxon sword had querors - 
reached — to the eastward, that is, of the line which 
we have drawn through Central Britain — the coun- 
try showed no sign of British or Roman life at all. 
The tradition both of conquerors and of conquered 
tells us that an utter change had taken place in the 
men that dwelt in it. They knew themselves only 
as Englishmen, and in the history or law of these 
English inhabitants we find as yet not a trace of 
the existence of a single Briton among them. 1 The 
only people that English chronicle or code knows 
of as living on the conquered soil are Englishmen. 
Nor does the British tradition know of any other. 
Had Britons formed part of the population in the 
land which had been reft away by the invader's 
sword, they must have been known to their fellow- 
Britons beyond the English border. But in the one 
record of such a Britain that remains to us, the his- 
tory of Gildas, there is no hint of their existence. 2 
To him, as to his fellow-countrymen, the land of the 
Englishmen is a foreign land, and its people a for- 
eign people. 

1 From the close of the sixth century, when the conquest took 
wider bounds and a new character, we find a different state of 
things in the newly annexed districts. Here I am speaking strictly 
of the earlier age of conquest and of the portion of Britain which 
it covered. 

2 There is, indeed, a single phrase (Hist. cap. 25, " alii fame confecti 
accedentes, manus hostibus dabant in sevum servituri "), which speaks 
of the surrender of Britons to their conquerors ; but such captives 
would at such a time be sold into slavery, and the mention of them 
only makes the silence of Gildas elsewhere the more significant. 



!34 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. The contemporary tradition, then, is everywhere 
The settle- the same ; and it is confirmed by every fact which 
thTcon- meets us in the path of our story. Had the older 
querors. inhabitants remained as serfs or as a dependent peo- 
Evidence pj e among; their conquerors, as the older inhabitants 

of names. ..„,., it-i i r 

of Gaul remained among the franks, or those ot 
Italy among the Lombards, we should find a state 
of things in some degree like to that of Italy or 
Gaul. We should find, at any rate, some traces of 
the provincials in the history of the joint popula- 
tion; some traces of their cities and their country- 
houses ; some of their names mingling with those of 
the new-comers ; some remains of their language, 
their religion, their manners, and their law. But in 
conquered Britain we find not a trace of these things. 
The designations of the local features of the country, 
indeed — the names of hill and vale and river — often 
remain purely Celtic. There are " pens " and " duns " 
among our uplands, " combes " in our valleys, " exes " 
and " ocks " among our running waters. But when 
we look at the traces of human life itself, at the 
names of the villages and hamlets that lie scattered 
over the country-side, we find them purely English. 
The " vill " and the " city " have vanished, and in 
their stead appear the " tun " and " ham " and 
" thorpe " of the new settlers. If we turn from the 
names of these villages to those of the men who live 
in them, the contrast becomes even stronger. So 
far as existing documents tell us anything, they tell 
us that Roman and Welshman wholly vanished 
from the land. When Gregory of Tours writes the 
story of Gaul after its conquest by the Franks, we 
meet in the course of his narrative with as many 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



135 



Roman names as Frank. But in the parallel history chap. IV - 
of Britain after its conquest by the English which The settle- 
we owe to Baeda, we meet with no British or Roman tJie con- 
names at all. He gives us, indeed, the names of querors - 
Britons in districts which still remained free from 
English rule ; but amid the hundreds of men and 
women whom he records as living and acting in the 
new England, there is not one whose name is not 
almost certainly English. 1 

It is the same with language. Latin, which had Ev j dence 

00 ' of lan- 

been the official tongue of the province, the lan- guage. 
guage of its soldiers and civil administrators, and 
probably that of its citizens, withdrew before the 
invader to the southwest and the west. When it 
again appeared in Eastern Britain, it came as a for- 
eign tongue brought in by foreign missionaries, and 
needing interpreters to explain it to the men it found 
there. 2 The British tongue — the tongue, that is, of 
the mass of the population even under Roman rule 
— though it lived on as the tongue of the Britons 
themselves in the land to which they withdrew, has 
left hardly a trace of its existence in the language 
which has taken its place over the conquered area. 3 



1 I do not know- of any that have even been claimed as British 
save Coifi and the West Saxon Ceadwalla. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 23, 25 ; id. Vit. Abbatum, ed. Stevenson, p. 141. 

3 The Celtic words in our earlier English were first collected by 
Mr. Garnett in his Philological Essays. They are few, and mostly 
words of domestic use, such as basket, which may well have crept in 
from the female slaves who must here and there have been seized 
by the invaders. It must be remembered, too, that we have no 
means of ascertaining when such words became English ;* and that 
after the change in the character of the conquest — that is, from the 
seventh century — Welsh words, like Welsh names, would naturally 



136 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. There is the same utter change in government, in 
The settle- society, in law. The Roman law simply disap- 

SeCon- peared j 1 and no trace of the body of Celtic customs 

querors. w hj c h form the Welsh law can be detected in the 
purely Teutonic institutes which formed the law of 
the English settlers. The political institutions that 
we find established in the conquered land, as well 
as the social usages of the conquering people, are 
utterly different from those of the Roman or the 
Celt; not only are they those which are common 
to the German race, but they are the most purely 
German institutions that any branch of the German 
race has preserved. 2 

Evidence Had any fragment of the older provincial life sur- 

oj towns. jo 1 

vived, the analogy of other provinces shows that it 
would have been that municipal organization which 



filter in from the mixed population of Western and Southwestern 
Britain. 

1 Stubbs, Constit. Hist. i. 11. 

2 Stubbs, Constit. Hist. i. 6 : " If its history is not the perfectly- 
pure development of Germanic principles, it is the nearest existing 
approach to such a development." Again, at p. 1 1 : " The polity- 
developed by the German races on British soil is the purest product 
of their primitive instinct. . . . The institutions of the Saxons of 
Germany long after the conquest of Britain were the most perfect 
exponent of the system which Tacitus saw, and described in the 
Germania ; and the polity of their kinsmen in England, though it 
may not be older in its monuments than the Lex Salica, is more 
entirely free from Roman influences. In England the common 
germs were developed and ripened with the smallest intermixture 
of foreign elements. Not only were all the successive invasions of 
Britain, which from the eighth to the eleventh century diversify the 
history of the island, conducted by nations of common extraction, 
but, with the exception of ecclesiastical influence, no foreign inter- 
ference that was not German in origin was admitted at all. Lan- 
guage, law, customs, and religion preserve their original conforma- , 
tion and coloring." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



137 



elsewhere handed down the tradition of the Empire. CHAP - iv- 
In the Roman world political and social life had The settie- 
been concentrated in its towns, and we have seen thecon- 
how great a part they played in the times which fol- queror8- 
lowed the withdrawal of the Roman rule. But with 
the English conquest the towns disappear. Though 
the Englishmen, like other Germans, shrank from 
dwelling within city walls, a native population, had it 
survived here as it survived elsewhere, would have 
remained, subject indeed, but unchanged, in its older 
homes. But as the conquest passed over them, the 
towns of Roman Britain sank into mere ruins. 
Some never rose from their ruins. Anderida re- 
mained a wreck of uninhabited stones in the twelfth 
century, 1 and its square of walls remains lonely and 
uninhabited still. Silchester and Uriconium, large 
as they were, have only been brought to light again 
by modern research. The very sites of many still 
remain undiscovered. Such a permanent extinction, 
however, was seldom possible, for the local advan- 
tages which had drawn population to hill or river- 
ford in Celtic or Roman times began again to tell as 
the new England itself grew populous and indus- 
trial, and the sites of these older cities became nec- 
essarily the sites of the new. But their repeopling 
was only after centuries of desolation and neglect. 
We have no ground for believing that Winchester 
had risen on the site of the Belgic Gwenta before 
the middle of the seventh century. 2 Cambridge was 

1 Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (ed. Arnold), p. 45. 

2 The local traditions place the hallowing of the new church there 
in 648. See Rudborne, Hist. Major, and Annales Eccl. Wint. ( Anglia 
Sacra, i. 189, 288). 



j^g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. still a heap of ruins in the eighth century, 1 though it 
The^ettie- had risen to fresh life in the tenth. The great mili- 

Se n con- tary station of Deva was still the " waste Chester " 

querors. ^at /Ethelfrith left it, when yEthelflsed four hun- 
dred years after made it her Chester on the Dee. 2 
And even when life returned to them, it was long 
before the new towns could again cover the whole 
area of their ruined predecessors. It was not till 
Cnut's time that York could cover the area of Ebu- 
racum. It was not till after Dunstan's day that 
Canterbury grew big enough to fill again the walls 
of Durovernum. It was not till the very eve of the 
conquest that London itself stretched its dwellings 
over the space which lay within the walls of Lon- 
dinium. 3 The new towns, too, grew up as new 
towns. Of the life or municipal government of their 
Roman predecessors they knew nothing. They in- 
herited no curials or decurions. Their municipal 
constitution, like their social organization, was of a 
purely English type. 4 

Evidence The faith of Britain perished as utterly. Nothing 
1gl0 "' brings home to us so vividly the change which had 
passed over the conquered country as the entire dis- 
appearance of its older religion. Had the conquest 
of Britain been in any way like the conquest of 
Italy or of Gaul, its religious issue could hardly 
have been other than theirs. Had the Britons been 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 19. 

2 Flor. Wore. (ed. Thorpe) : " Civitatem Legionum, tunc temporis 
desertam." E. Chron. a. 894 : " Anre waestre castre." 

3 At all these three towns the parishes furthest from the new 
starting-point within the walls are, as the dedications of their 
churches show, of these dates. 

4 Stubbs, Constit. Hist. i. 105, and tiote. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 1 ^ 

left existing on the soil as a subject population, pay- chap, iv.- 
ing tribute to or tilling the lands of foreign lords, The settle- 
the change of faith would most probably have been t ™ e Con . 
a change in the religion of the conquerors, and not querors - 
of the conquered. To judge from the stubbornness 
with which the Romanized peoples rejected heathen- 
dom, and from the facility with which the Teutonic 
races elsewhere yielded to the spell of Christianity, 
it was not the Britons who would have become wor- 
shippers of Woden, but Engle and Saxon who would 
have become worshippers of Christ. But even if we 
suppose the invaders to have retained their old re- 
ligion, the religious aspect of the land, as a whole, 
would have been little altered. In no instance did 
the Teutonic conquerors wage a religious war on 
the faiths of the conquered people. To barbarous 
races, indeed, who look on religion as simply a 
part of the national life, proselytism or persecution 
is impossible. The heathendom of the invaders 
would have been confined to their own settlements, 
and the whole British population would have re- 
mained Christian as before. Its churches, its priest- 
hood, its ecclesiastical organization, its dioceses and 
provinces, its connection with the rest of the West- 
ern Church, would have gone on without material 
change. 

But what we find is the very reverse of this. In 
the conquered part of Britain Christianity wholly dis- 
appeared. The Church, and the whole organization 
of the Church, vanished. The few religious build- 
ings of whose existence we catch a glimpse survived 
only as deserted ruins. So far was any connection 
with Western Christianity from existing that all the 



I40 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. rest of the Christian world, whether of the Celtic or 
The settle- Roman obedience, lost sight of the conquered part 
SITcon- of Britain altogether. When Rome long afterwards 
querors. S0U ght to renew its contact with it, it was as with a 
heathen country ; ' and it was in the same way as a 
heathen country that it was regarded by the Chris- 
tians of Ireland and by the Christians of Wales. 
When missionaries at last made their way into its 
bounds, there is no record of their having found a 
single Christian in the whole country. What they 
found was a purely heathen land ; a land where 
homestead and boundary and the very days of the 
week bore the names of new gods who had displaced 
Christ, and where the inhabitants were so strange to 
the faith they brought that they looked at its wor- 
ship as magic. 2 It is hardly possible to conceive a 
stronger proof that the conquest of Britain had been 
a real displacement of the British people; for ifWo- 
denism so utterly supplanted Christianity, it can only 
have been because the worshippers of Woden had 
driven off from the soil the worshippers of Christ. 
influence Complete, however, as was the wreck of Roman 

of Roman 1 . 

Br/tain on Hie, complete as was the displacement up to this 
ie iish. g ' point of the older British population, the past his- 
tory of the island was not without its influence on 
the new settlers. Its physical structure, to a great 
extent, dictated the lines of their advance, the extent 
of their conquest, and their political distribution 



1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 23. The first Roman missionaries thought 
of returning home rather than of encountering these heathen : 
" redire domum potius quam barbaram, feram, incredulamque gen- 
tem, cujus ne linguam quidem nossent, adire cogitabant." 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. i. 25. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. j^ ._ 

over the conquered soil, as it had dictated the con- chap, iv. 
quest and settlement of the races that had preceded The settie- 
them. The province, indeed, gave its bounds to the thTcon- 
new England. It was not the island of Britain querors - 
which Engle and Saxon had mastered, it was the 
portion of it which lay within the bounds of the Ro- 
man Empire. Even in its widest advance, English 
life stopped abruptly at the Frith of Forth and of 
Clyde, as Roman life had stopped there before it ; 
while it penetrated but slowly and imperfectly into 
the western and northwestern districts of Britain, 
as Rome had penetrated but slowly and imperfectly 
into them. The mountains and moors which had 
checked the progress of the one invader checked 
the progress of the other. But even within the lim- 
its of conquered Britain, its physical features often 
shaped the settlement of the conquerors. The story 
of the conquest, as we have striven to follow it, has 
shown us how great an influence the very ground 
exerted on the direction and the fortunes of every 
English campaign. In the bulk of cases its charac- 
ter determined the bounds, and with the bounds the 
after-destinies, of the various peoples that parted the 
land between them. The Andredsweald, with its 
outliers, prisoned the Jutes within the limits of the 
Caint, and turned them into Cant-wara, or Kentish 
men. It dwarfed into political insignificance the 
Surrey folk and the South Saxons, whom it pressed 
between its northern edge and the Thames, or be- 
tween its southern edge and the sea. The insular 
character of the Gwent upon the eastern coast forced 
the bands of invaders that landed there into politi- 
cal union as the people of the East Angles. In the 



I4 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

char iv. same way, the long range of moorland and fen and 
The settle- sea-coast which formed the framework of Yorkshire, 
SfTcon- and so long preserved the individuality of this por- 
querors. ^ on £ fae island, furnished the Deirans with their 
natural boundaries, and made them, from the mere 
space they enclosed, one of the greater peoples of 
Britain. 1 The West Saxons profited even more from 
the character of the ground which th'ey traversed. 
Touching originally at the one point in the south- 
ern coast where access to the province was easy, 
they found their first settlements moulded by the 
bounds and divisions of the southern downs, while 
from their slopes to eastward and westward lay open 
before them the valleys of the Severn and the Thames. 
The territory of Ceawlin, with all the long series of 
events which widened the realm of the West Saxons 
into the kingdom of England, were but the necessary 
issues of the physical circumstances which brought 
about their first landing and settlement in Britain. 
offtTZut ^ or was ^ e political structure of the province 
uaiand without as distinct an influence on the settlement of 
structure, the invaders. The towns, with their subject districts, 
often gave shape and bounds to the states which 
their conquerors founded about their ruins. The 
districts of Camulodunum, Verulamium, and Lon- 
dinium made up the kingdom of the East Saxons. 

1 It is, however, remarkable that in the case of Yorkshire the in- 
cidents of the conquest modified the political boundaries of both 
Celtic and Roman times. In both, the territory on the western and 
eastern coast belonged to the same district, and the moorlands which 
part our Yorkshire from our Lancashire formed no boundary-line. 
In the earlier days of the English conquest, it seemed as if this ar- 
rangement would be preserved ; and only a complicated set of transac- 
tions in later times made Yorkshire the separate district which it is. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



143 



The territory which the West Saxons acquired after chap. iv. 
the battle of Bedford, to the north of the Thames, The settle- 
consisted of the districts of four cities, whose early Secon- 
names are forgotten. Those of Bath, Gloucester, q uerors - 
and Cirencester formed the territory of the Hwiccas. 
That of Ratas, or Leicester, formed, in all probability, 
the territory of the Middle English. And what was 
true of the political life of Britain was true also of 
its social life. If the Roman landowner had disap- 
peared, if his villa was a mound of ashes and charred 
stones, if his cattle and serfs had been alike slaugh- 
tered or driven off from the soil, the material work 
which four hundred years of continuous life had 
done could not wholly pass away. After all his 
slaughter and pillage, the Englishman found himself 
in no mere desert. On the contrary, he stood in the 
midst of a country, the material framework of whose 
civilization remained unharmed. The Roman road 
still struck like an arrow over hill and plain. The 
Roman bridge still spanned river and stream. If 
farmer and landowner had disappeared, farm and field 
remained ; and if the conquerors settled at all, it was 
inevitable that they should settle, in the bulk of cases, 
beside the homes and on the estates of the men they 
had driven out. It was thus that the Roman " vill " 
often became the English township; that the boun- 
daries of its older masters remained the bound-marks 
of the new ; that serf and last took the place of colo- 
nus and slave ; while the system of cultivation was 
probably, in the case of both peoples, sufficiently iden- 
tical to need little change in field or homestead. 1 

1 It is in this settlement on the existing estates, etc., that we find 



I44 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. But if the old divisions of the land remained to 

The settle- furnish limits for the states of its conquerors, or 

thTcon- bounds of field and farm for their settlers, the whole 

querors. organization of government and society had disap- 

Roman peared with the men to whom it belonged. Rome 

Kent. * ... . & . 

was gone ; and its law, its literature, its faith, had 
gone with it. The Briton himself was now simply a 
stranger, gazing back upon the land he had lost from 
a distant frontier. The mosaics, the coins, which 
we dig up in our fields, are no relics of our fathers, 
but of a world which our fathers' sword swept utter- 
ly away. How thoroughly the work was done we 
can see in a single instance, that of the first land 
which the invaders won. In the days before the 
Jutish conquest, few parts of the island were wealth- 
ier or more populous than the Caint or Kent, the 
chalk upland which jutted into the Channel between 
the alluvial flats of the Thames estuary and the 
mouth of the Weald. 1 This district had, in fact, 
been one of the earliest points of human settlement 

the explanation of many facts adduced by Mr. Coote, in his various 
works, to prove the continuity of the life of Roman Britain. 

1 The Roman and Jutish Caint, it must be remembered, occupied 
a far smaller space of ground than our modern county of Kent ; for 
the Weald, as yet uninvaded by axe or plough, threw its outskirts 
far and wide over the country on the southwest. Kemble, Saxons 
in England, i. 483, says, " If we follow the main road from Hythe 
to Maidstone a little to the north of Aldington and running to the 
east of Boughton, we find a tract of country extending to the bor- 
ders of Sussex and filled with places ending in ' den ' or ' hurst ' . . . 
along the edge of the Weald, within whose shades the ' swains ' 
found ' mast and pasture.' " He enumerates a few of them which 
form a belt of mark or forest round the cultivated country quite in- 
dependent of the woods which lay between village and village. 
Even within the bounds of the earlier Caint, too, the space fit for 
habitation was broken by thick woodlands like the forest of Blean. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



145 



in Britain. In Roman times its towns were small chap^iv. 
and unimportant : those of the coast seem simply to The settie- 
have been military stations of the Saxon Shore, while the con- 
Durovernum and Durobrivae were little clusters of <i u f^ rs - 
houses that had grown up at the passages of the 
Stour and the Medway. But in the valleys of these 
rivers population must have lain thickly; even the 
flats alone the coast of the Thames were the scene 
of busy industries: and if the homesteads which 
studded the face of the country were smaller and 
less splendid than those of Southwestern Britain, 
their number, as well as the absence of the military 
stations that were so abundant elsewhere, shows the 
peace and prosperity of a district which its position 
sheltered from the Pictish forays that wasted the 
north and centre of the island. 1 The greater num- 
ber of such houses lay along what had been the line 
of Hengest's inroad, along the road from Canter- 
bury to London, and along the banks of the Med- 
way. The fields which then bordered the lower val- 
ley of this river at Upchurch furnished the bulk of 
the common hardware used throughout the country, 
and the extent of its remains shows that it was the 
home of a large working population. 2 Potteries 
hardly less extensive existed on the brink of Rom- 
ney Marsh ; while from pits at Dartford, Crayford, 
and Chiselhurst chalk was exported to Zealand, on 
the coast of which are still found altars to the god- 
dess of the Kentish chalk-workers. 3 

1 See a paper on Roman Kent, by Roach Smith, in Archseol. Can- 
tiana, ii. 38. 

2 Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, pp. 260, 261. 

3 Murray's Kent, Introduction, pp. x., xi. 

IO 



146 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. But with the conquest of the Jutes all this wealth 
The settle- and industry disappeared. The potteries sank into 
thTcolf- heaps of ruins amidst marshes that took the place 
querors. £ ft\Q meadows in which they stood. The country- 
Kent after houses, as their ruins show, became heaps of black- 
quest. ened stone. The towns as they fell beneath the con- 
queror's sword were left burned and desolate. The 
massacre which followed the victories of Hengest, 
indeed, showed the merciless nature of the warfare 
of the Jutes. While the wealthier Kentish land- 
owners fled in panic over the sea, the poorer Britons 
took refuge in hill or forest, or among the neighbor- 
ing fastnesses of the Weald, till hunger drove them 
from their lurking-places to be cut down or enslaved 
by their conquerors. It was in vain that some sought 
shelter within the walls of their churches, for the rage 
of the invaders seems to have burned fiercest against 
the clergy. The priests were slain at the altar, the 
churches fired, the peasants driven by the flames to 
fling themselves on a ring of pitiless steel. 1 For a 

1 Gildas, Hist. cap. 24, 25 : " Confovebatur namque, ultionis justse 
prsecedentium scelerum causa, de mari usque ad mare ignis orienta- 
lis, sacrilegorum manu exaggeratus, et finitimas quasque civitates 
agrosque populans, qui non quievit accensus, donee cunctam pene 
exurens insulae superficiem rubra occidentalem trucique oceanum 
lingua delamberet. . . . Ita ut cunctse columnar crebris arietibus, 
omnesque coloni cum prsepositis ecclesiae, cum sacerdotibus ac po- 
pulo, mucronibus undique micantibus, ac flammis crepitantibus, si- 
mul solo sternerentur, et miserabili visu, in medio platearum, ima 
turrium edito cardine evulsarum, murorumque celsorum saxa, sacra 
altaria, cadaverum frusta, crustis ac semigelantibus purpurei cruoris 
tecta, velut in quodam horrendo torculari mixta viderentur, et nulla 
esset omnimodis, prseter horribiles domorum ruinas, bestiarum vo- 
lucrumque ventres, in medio sepultura. . . . Itaque nonnulli mise- 
rarum reliquiarum in montibus deprehensi acervatim jugulabantur; 
alii fame confecti accedentes, manus hostibus dabant, in aevum ser- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^7 

while the ruin of the land must have seemed com- chap.iv. 
plete ; and even when the settlement of the con-ihesettie- 
querors had brought a new life to its downs and thecon- 
river - valleys, the wreck and solitude of the towns * lueror3 - 
bore their witness to the completeness with which 
the older life had been done away. E)urovernum re- 
mained a waste till y^Ethelberht's day, and it is not 
till the eighth century that we hear of any new 
dwellers at Dover. 1 The sites of the deserted cities 
passed naturally into the common lands of the Cant- 
wara, the folk-land which the Kentish king took for 
his own possession, or from which he made grants 
to his thegns ; and it is thus that if we look in 
vEthelberht's day for the site of Regulbium, we find 
it occupied by the king's "vill" of Reculver; while 
the Kentish Ceatta, no doubt though a royal grant, 
planted the " ham " which has grown into our Chat- 
ham on the banks of the Medway, in the territory of 
the forsaken Durobrivas. But even then he made 
his little settlement not within, but without, its walls ; 
and when the town reappears in the days of yEthel- 
berht, it is no longer under its old name, but under 
that of the Jutish Hrof, who had at last taken it for 
his home, as Hrofes-ceaster, 2 or Rochester. 

As we stand amidst the ruins of such towns or The new 
country-houses, and recall the wealth and culture of society. 
Roman Britain, it is hard to believe that a conquest 

vituri, si tamen non continuo trucidarentur, quod altissimae gratiae 
stabat in loco ; alii transmarinas petebant regiones, cum ululatu 
magno ceu celeusmatis vice, . . . alii montanis collibus, minacibus 
praeruptis vallati, et densissimis saltibus, marinisque rupibus vitam, 
suspecta semper mente, credentes, in patria. licet trepidi perstabant." 

1 Malmesbury, Life of Aldhelm (Anglia Sacra, ii. 20). 

3 E. Chron. a. 604 ; Eteda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 3. 



148 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. which left them heaps of crumbling stones was other 
The settle- than a curse to the land over which it passed. But 
thTcon* ^ the new England that sprang from the wreck of 
querors. Britain seemed for the moment a waste from which 
the arts, the letters, the refinement of the world, had 
fled hopelessly away, it contained within itself germs 
of a nobler life than that which had been destroyed. 1 
Here, as everywhere throughout the Roman world, 
the base of social life was the peasant crushed by a 
deepening fiscal tyranny into the slave ; while the 
basis of political life was the hardly less enslaved 
proprietor, disarmed, bound like his serf to the soil, 
and powerless to withstand the greed of a govern- 
ment in which he took no part But, whether po- 
litically or socially, the base of the new English soci- 
ety was the freeman who had been tilling, judging, 
or fighting for himself by the Northern Sea. How- 
ever roughly he dealt with the material civilization 
of Britain while the struggle went on, it was impos- 
sible that such a man could be a mere destroyer. 
War, in fact, was no sooner over than the warrior 
settled down into the farmer, and the home of the 
ceorl rose beside the heap of goblin-haunted stones 
that marked the site of the villa he had burned. 

1 In the sketch of our early institutions, I have mainly followed 
the guidance of Professor Stubbs through the chapters which open 
his Constitutional History. It must be remembered that we have 
little or no direct evidence for such a sketch, and can only infer 
the character of our institutions at this time, first from the tenor 
of like German institutions in yet earlier days, and, secondly, from 
the character which English institutions had themselves assumed 
some centuries later, when we can trace their existing form in the 
laws. Although, however, some details may still remain doubtful, 
the general accuracy of the conclusions which historical inquiry has 
reached in this matter may be looked on as established. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. I49 

The settlement of the conquerors was as direct a chap. iv. 
result of the character of the conquest as the with- The settie- 
drawal of the conquered people. It was the slow- thecon- 
ness of their advance, the small numbers of each querors - 
separate band in its descent upon the coast, that 
made it possible for the invaders to bring with them, 
or to call to them when their work was done, the 
wives and children, the laet and slave, even the cat- 
tle they had left behind them. 1 The wave of con- 
quest was thus but a prelude to the gradual migra- 
tion of a whole people. 2 For the settlement of the 
conquerors was nothing less than a transfer of Eng- 
lish society in its fullest form to the shores of Brit- 
ain. It was England that settled down on British 
soil — England with its own language, its own laws, 
its complete social fabric, its system of village life 
and village culture, its principle of kinship, its prin- 
ciple of representation. It was not as mere pirates 
or stray war bands, but as peoples already made, and 
fitted by a common temper and common customs to 
draw together into one nation in the days to come, 
that our fathers left their homeland for the land in 
which we live. 

At first sight, indeed, there seemed little promise -Difficulties 
of national unity in the mass of war bands and folks ° J 
that had taken the place of the provincials. One 
half of conquered Britain belonged to the Engle ; the 
bulk of the rest had fallen to the Saxon ; Kent and 
the Isle of Wight belonged to the Jute. Other peo- 
ples of the German coast seem to have joined in the 

1 For the difference between the British and English cattle, see 
Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, pp. 491, 492. 

2 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 72, 73. 



I c THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, iv. work of conquest, for we may certainly add Frisians 
The settle- to the list of invaders, and probably Franks ; but it 

ment of i • j • • j i • ±. 

the con- was only as individual warriors or as separate war 
querors. k anc } s that these can have joined in the invasion ; and 
if any trace of their settlement existed, it has whol- 
ly disappeared. But Jute, Engle, and Saxon were 
camped separately on the land ; nor is there any 
ground for believing that in this earlier time they 
regarded themselves as a single people. Even with- 
in each of these three main tribes themselves there 
can have been little unity or cohesion. On the east- 
ern coast we are distinctly told that war band after 
war band landed under their own ealdormen, con- 
quered their own tracts, and fought with one anoth- 
er as well as with the Britons before they were drawn 
together into the folk of the East Anglians. How 
universal this state of things must have been we see 
from the numerous traces of such small peoples that 
we incidentally meet with in our later history. A 
single list, for instance, which has been by chance 
preserved to us, hands down the names of some thir- 
ty tribes, apparently belonging, for the most part, to 
Mid-Britain, of the bulk of whom all knowledge is 
lost, though a few can still be identified by the geo- 
graphical character of their names. 1 But for this we 
should know nothing of the existence of the Chiltern- 
setna, or people of the Chilterns ; of the Elmedsetna, 
or settlers in Elmet ; of the Pecsetna, or that branch 
of the Mercians who colonized the fastnesses of the 



i See this list, which was originally printed by Sir Henry Spelman 
in his Glossary, under the head Hida, in Kemble's Saxons in Eng- 
land, vol. i. pp. 8 1, 82. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^j 

Peak ; or the Wrokensetna, who found a home at chap. iv. 
the base of the Wrekin. 1 The settie- 

Sporadic settlements of such isolated tribes, like SeCon- 
the Meonwara on the Southampton Water, meet us querors - 
constantly in the course of our story ; and the depend- Separate 
ent kingdoms within the larger ones, such as that of 
Oidilwald in the Deira of Oswiu's day, 2 point to the 
survival of this separate life in one quarter or anoth- 
er even when aggregation into larger groups had be- 
come an irresistible tendency in the people at large. 
Even in Kent, quickly as it was organized into a sin- 
gle kingdom, it would seem as if the conquerors orig- 
inally clustered around king or ealdorman in little 
groups, which were only gradually gathered together 
into one political body. The dwellers in the re- 
claimed flats of Romney Marsh, for instance, were 
long known as the Merscwara, or Marsh-folk, a name 
which points to a separate political existence at some 
early time ; while along the coast to the east of them 
we find in the name of Folkestone the trace of an- 
other separate folk, which may, like the Merscwara, 
have been only gradually drawn into the general 
community that knew itself as the Cantwara, or 
dwellers in the Caint. There are still stronger 
traces of separate life in the country west of the 
Medway, which was afterwards known as West 
Kent. In Kentish tradition, this tract represented 
an earlier kingdom under the rule of its own chief- 
tain, though dependent on the Kentish king; and 
the tradition is supported by the foundation of 

1 The word in the list is Wokensetna ; but a Mercian charter 
(Cod. Dip. 277) has the word " Wreocensetun." 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 23. 



!^ 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, iv. a separate bishopric at Rochester, whose prelates 
The settle- were dependent on the Kentish bishop at Canter- 

ment of v i 

the con- bury. 

querors. g u |- f r0 m the first the severance between such 
Real unity, tribes must have been rather apparent than real. 
Even in their German homeland the ties of a com- 
mon blood, common speech, common social and po- 
litical institutions, were drawing the smaller peoples 
together into nations such as the Alemannians, the 
Saxons, and the Franks, at the time when these ad- 
venturers pushed across the sea for the winning of 
Britain ; and the tendency to union which they thus 
carried with them could only have been strengthened 
by the strife that followed. Their common warfare 
with the Briton could not but unite them more 
closely. If we judge from the names of English 
settlements, as from a few recorded incidents of the 
struggle, we should gather that each people gave 
help to its fellows in the course of the contest ; that 
Jutish warriors fought in the host of Cerdic as it 
won the Gwent; and that Saxon war bands aided in 
the reduction of East Anglia, as Engle war bands 
helped in the Saxon victory over the Four Towns. 
How irresistible the tendency towards union was 
from the very beginning, indeed, we see from the 
fact that the separate existence of the smaller com- 
munities we have spoken of had, for the most part, 
come to an end by the close of the sixth century. 

1 Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 148, explains by this sec- 
ond Kentish kingdom the Kentish practice of two kings reigning 
together, as in the case of Eadric and Hlothere, or Wihtred and 
^Ethelberht the Second. One of the later rulers, Sigired, calls him- 
self "King of half Kent " (Cod. Dip. no, 114). Malmesbury (Gest. 
Reg. lib. i. sec. 10) speaks of the " reguli " whom iEthelberht subdued. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ! 53 

At that time the various Jutish tribes of Kent, chap.iv. 
whatever may have been their original isolation, The settie- 
were definitely fused in the people of the Cantwara ; thTcon- 
while the Chilternsetna were lost in the West Sax- q tteror3 - 
ons, as the Pecsetna were lost in the Mercians. 
No traces of the separate war bands that conquered 
the island-like district on the eastern coast of Britain 
reach us in the recorded annals of the East Anglians. 
When written history first shows us the new Britain 
in the pages of Baeda, we find the original mass of 
folks and war bands already gathered together in 
some eight or nine distinct peoples ; ' and even these 
showing a tendency to group themselves in three 
great masses which soon became the kingdoms of 
Northern, Central, and Southern Britain. To bring 
these three masses together into a single nation 
proved a longer and a harder task. But, distinct 
as they remained for two hundred years, we see 
no trace of consciousness of any race difference 
between them. The lines of demarcation, indeed, 
which divide the one from the other are not race 
lines; the earliest of these over -kingdoms, that of 
./Ethelberht, embraces Jute and Engle, if not Saxon, 
alike within its pale; and in the later conquest for 
supremacy over Britain, the strife is not a twofold 
strife between Engle and Saxon, but a threefold 
strife of a purely political order, in which the Engle 
kingdoms of Northumbria and Mercia wage a fiercer 
fight against one another than that of either against 
the Saxons of the south. The only differences, in 
fact, that we can find between the various peoples 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 15. 



1 ca THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. w ho settle over the face of Britain are differences of 
The settle- dialect, or distinctions in the form of a buckle 1 or 

t^Tcon- the shape of a grave-mound. As early as Baeda's 

querors. fay fa e y j^ i eara ed to recognize themselves under 
a single collective name, as the people of the Eng- 
lish. 2 In the whole structure of their life, political, 
social, domestic, religious, all were at one. 

Civiiiza- Q( the character of their life at this early time we 

tion of the . , 

English, can only speak generally. Barbarous as it seemed 
to Roman eyes, it was already touched by the civili- 
zation with which Rome was slowly transforming 
the barbaric world. Even in their German home- 
land, though its border nowhere touched the border 
of the Empire, Saxon and Engle were far from being 
strange to the arts and culture of Rome. Roman 
commerce, indeed, reached the shores of the Baltic 
along tracks which had been used for ages by trad- 
ers, whether Etruscan 3 or Greek ; and we have 
abundant evidence that the arts and refinement of 
Rome were brought into contact with these men of 
the north. Brooches, sword-belts, and shield-bosses 
which have been found in Sleswick, and which can 
be dated not later than the close of the third cen- 
tury, are clearly either of Roman make or closely 
modelled on Roman metal-work ; 4 and discoveries 



1 Wright (The Celt, the Roman, and the Saxon, pp. 481-482) con- 
siders the round buckles as peculiar to the Jutes, the cross-shaped 
to the Engle. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 1 : " quinque gentium Unguis. . . . Anglorum 
videlicet, Brittonum, Scottorum, Pictorum, et Latinorum. Stubbs, 
Const. Hist. i. 143. 

3 Boyd Dawkins, Early Man in Britain, chap. xiii. 

* Lubbock, Prehistoric Times, pp. 9-1 1 ; Wright, The Celt, the 
Roman, and the Saxon, p. 498. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. !^ 

of Roman coins in Sleswick peat-mosses afford a yet chap. iv. 
more conclusive proof of direct intercourse with the The settie- 
Empire. But apart from these outer influences, the Se n con- 
men of the three tribes were far from being mere i uerors - 
savages. They were fierce warriors, but they were 
also busy fishers and tillers of the soil, as proud of 
their skill in handling plough and mattock or steer- 
ing the rude boat with which they hunted walrus 
and whale as of their skill in handling sword and 
spear. 1 They were hard drinkers, no doubt, as they 
were hard toilers, and the " ale-feast " was the centre 
of their social life. But, coarse as the revel might 
seem to modern eyes, the scene within the timbered 
hall which rose in the midst of their villages was 
often Homeric in its simplicity and dignity. Queen 
or eorls wife, with a train of maidens, bore ale-bowl 
or mead-bowl 2 round the hall, from the high settle 
of king or ealdorman in the midst to the benches 
ranged around its walls, while the gleeman sang the 
hero-songs of his race. They had already a litera- 
ture; and though the Roman missionaries had not 
as yet introduced their alphabet, the Runic letters, 
which these men shared with the other German 
races, sufficed to record on tablets of oak or beech 
an epic such as that of Beowulf, or the rude annals 
which, as those preserved in our present Chronicle 
show, already existed as materials for history. 3 Dress 
and arms showed traces of a love of art and beauty, 

1 Beowulf, w. 1090-1120. 

2 See the fine scene in Beowulf, vv. 1 226-1 254, where Hrothgar's 
queen bears the mead-cup about his hall to the warriors and the 
hero. 

3 Guest, E. E. Sett. p. 39. 



156 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



erature. 



chap. iv. none the less real that it was rude and incomplete. 
The settle- Rings, amulets, ear-rings, neck-pendants, proved in 

Sufcoa- their workmanship the deftness of the goldsmith's 

querors. art< Cloaks were often fastened with golden buckles 
of curious and exquisite form, set sometimes with 
rough jewels and inlaid with enamel. 1 The bronze 
boar-crest on the warrior's helmet, the intricate adorn- 
ment of the warrior's shield, tell, like the honor in 
which the smith was held, their tale of industrial art. 8 
The curiously twisted glass goblets, so common in 
the early graves of Kent, are shown by their form 
to be of English workmanship. 3 It is only in the 
English pottery, hand-made, and marked with zig- 
zag patterns, that we find traces of rudeness. 

Their ut- The same indications of a life far higher than that 
of mere barbarism are to be seen in their literature. 
Among the scanty relics of our early poetry, we still 
find a few pieces which date from a time before the 
conquest of Britain. 4 Most of them are mere frag- 
ments; but even in these we find the two distin- 



1 Large quantities of such ornaments have been found in the old- 
er burial-grounds, especially those of Kent. See the Inventorium 
Sepulcrale of Bryan Faussett for an account of these objects and 
their discovery. 

2 Beowulf, w. 612-615. Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and the 
Saxon, p. 486 ; Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 280. 

3 Roach Smith, in Archaeol. Cantiana, i. 46 ; Wright, The Celt, 
the Roman, and the Saxon, p. 495, etc. 

4 Such are Deor's Complaint, a poem, says Mr. Sweet (in his 
Sketch of the History of Anglo-Saxon Poetry, in Hazlitt's edition 
of Warton's History of English Poetry, 1871, Preface to vol. ii.), al- 
most lyric in its character, in which Deor, a poet who has been 
supplanted by a rival, consoles himself by the thought of heroes 
who had borne and survived greater ills than he ; the Gleeman's 
Tale, which is possibly a poetic riddle ; and a fragment on the at- 
tack of Fin's palace in Friesland. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



157 



guishing features of our later verse — a tendency to CHAP - IV - 
melancholy and pathos, and a keen enjoyment and The settie- 
realization of outer nature.' The one large and com- the con. 
plete work which remains, the Song of Beowulf, is querors - 
the story of that hero's deeds : how alone at night- 
fall, in King Hrothgar's hall, he met the fiend Gren- 
del, w T ho for twelve years had carried off the king's 
warriors to devour them in his den ; how, to com- 
plete his victory, he plunged into the dreadful lake 
where Grendel and Grendel's mother made their 
dwelling, and brought back their heads to Hrothgar; 
how, himself become a king, he is called in old-age 
to meet a dragon that assails his people, forsaken by 
his comrades, and, though victorious, drained of his 
life-blood by the wounds he receives in the terrible 
grapple. The Song as we have it now is a poem of 
the eighth century — the work, it may be, of some 
English missionary of the days of Baeda and Boni- 
face, who gathered in the homeland of his race the 
legends of its earlier prime. 2 But the thin veil of 

1 See in Beowulf, vv. 2719-2756, the description of Grendel's 
abode, that " hidden land, where wolves lurk ; windy nesses, perilous 
fen - tracts, where the mountain stream, shrouded in mists, pours 
down the cliffs, deep in earth. Not far from here stands the lake 
overshadowed with groves of ancient trees, fast by their roots. 
There a dread fire may be seen every night shining wondrously in 
the water. The wisest of the sons of men knows not the bottom. 
When the heath-stalker, the strong-horned stag, hard pressed by 
the hounds, coursed from afar, seeks shelter in the wood, he will 
yield up his life on the shore sooner than plunge in and hide his 
head. That is an accursed place ; the strife of waves rises black 
to the clouds when the wind stirs hostile storms, until the air dark- 
ens, the heavens shed tears " (Hazlitt's Warton, vol. ii. Introd. by 
Mr. Sweet, p. 11). 

2 Mr. Sweet (Hazlitt's Warton, vol. ii. p. 10) says, " It is evident 
that the poem, as we have it, has undergone considerable altera- 



158 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. Christianity which he has flung over it fades away 
The settle- as we follow the hero-legend of our fathers ; and the 
th^con- secret of their moral temper, of their conception of 
querors. }jf e? breathes through every line. Life was built 
with them, not on the hope of a hereafter, but on 
the proud self-consciousness of noble souls. " I have 
this folk ruled these fifty winters," 1 sings the hero- 
king as he sits, death-smitten, beside the dragon's 
mound. " Lives there no folk-king of kings about 
me — not any one of them — dare in the war -strife 
welcome my onset! Time's change and chances I 
have abided, held my own fairly, sought not to snare 
men ; oath never sware I falsely against right. So 
for all this may I glad be at heart now, sick though 
I sit here, wounded with death wounds !" In men 
of such a temper, strong with the strength of man- 
hood and full of the vigor and the love of life, the 
sense of its shortness and of the mystery of it all, 
woke chords of a pathetic poetry. " Soon will it be," 
ran the warning rime, " that sickness or sword-blade 
shear thy strength from thee, or the fire ring thee, 
or the flood whelm thee, or the sword grip thee, or 
arrow hit thee, or age o'ertake thee, and thine eye's 

tions. In the first place, there is a distinctly Christian element, 
contrasting strongly with the general heathen current of the whole. 
Many of these passages are so incorporated into the poem that it is 
impossible to remove them without violent alterations of the text ; 
others, again, are palpable interpolations. . . . Without these addi- 
tions and alterations, it is certain that we have in Beowulf a poem 
composed before the Teutonic conquest of Britain. The localities 
are purely Continental ; the scenery is laid among the Goths of 
Sweden and the Danes ; in the episodes the Swedes, Frisians, and 
other Continental tribes appear, while there is no mention of Eng- 
land, or the adjoining countries and nations." 
1 Beowulf, w. 5458-5474. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. i cq 

brightness sink^ down in darkness." Strong as he chap^iv. 
might be, man struggled in vain with the doom that The settie- 
encompassed him, that girded his life with a thousand afcon! 
perils and broke it at so short a span. " To us," ^wrors. 
cries Beowulf, in his last fight — " to us it shall be as 
our weird betides, that weird that is every man's 
lord !" But the sadness with which they fronted 
the mysteries of life and death had nothing in it of 
the unmanly despair which bids men eat and drink, 
for to-morrow they die. Death leaves man man and 
master of his fate. The thought of good fame, of 
manhood, is stronger than the thought of doom. 
" Well shall a man do when in the strife he minds 
but of winning longsome renown, nor for his life 
cares !" ' " Death is better than life of shame !" 2 cries 
Beowulf's sword-fellow. Beowulf himself takes up 
his strife with the fiend, " go the weird as it will." If 
life is short, the more cause to work bravely till it is 
over. " Each man of us shall abide the end of his 
life-work ; let him that may work, work his doomed 
deeds ere death come !" 3 

It is in words such as these that we must look for T ff*f ™" 
the religious temper of Saxon or Engle, rather than 
in what is commonly called their religion. Their 
gods were the same as those of the rest of the Ger- 
man peoples ; for though Christianity had won over 
the Roman Empire, it had not penetrated as yet into 
the forests of the north. Our own names for the 
days of the week still recall to us the deities whom 
our fathers worshipped. Wednesday is the day of 



1 Beowulf, w. 3073-3077. 2 Beowulf, vv. 5774-5777- 

3 Beowulf, w. 2777-2780. 



j6o the MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. Woden, the war-god, the guardian of ways and boun- 
The settle- daries, the inventor of letters, the common god of 
thecon- the whole conquering people, and whom each of the 
querors. con q Ue ring tribes held to be the first ancestor of its 
kings. 1 Thursday is the day of Thunder, the god of 
air and storm and rain ; as Friday is Frea's day, a 
deity of peace and joy and fruitfulness, whose em- 
blems borne aloft by dancing maidens brought in- 
crease to every field and stall they visited. Satur- 
day may commemorate an obscure god, Scetere ; and 
some early worship of sun and moon perhaps left its 
trace in the names of Sunday and Monday ; 2 while 
Tuesday was dedicated to Tiw, once (like the Greek 
Zeus, with whose name his own is connected) the 
god of the sky, but who in later days sank into a 
dark and terrible deity, to meet whom was death. 
Behind these floated dim shapes of an older mythol- 
ogy : Eostre, the god of the dawn or of the spring, 
who lent her name in after -days to the Christian 
festival of the resurrection; Wyrd, the death -god- 
dess, whose memory lingered long in the weird of 
northern superstition; or the Shield Maidens, the 
mighty women who, an old rime tells us, " wrought 
on the battle-field their toil, and hurled the thrilling 
javelins." Nearer to the popular fancy lay deities 



1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 15. Woden was the ancestor of the royal 
stocks of Kent, East Anglia, Essex, Mercia, Deira, Bernicia, by his 
sons Wehta, Casere, Seaxnote, Weothelgeat, Waegdasg, and Bseldaeg ; 
of the West Saxons, by his great-grandson, Frothegar. The ealdor- 
men of the Lindiswara claimed descent from his son Winta (see 
Genealogies in Flor. Wore. ed. Thorpe, i. 248 et seq.). 

a It is more probable, however, that when the week passed from 
the Roman world into use among the Germans, these three names 
passed with it. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^i 

of wood and fell, like Nicor, the water-sprite, who left chariv. 
his name to our nixies and " Old Nick," or hero-gods The settle- 
of legend and song. In the star-strown track of the the con- 
Milky-way, our fathers saw a road by which the ^ ue ^ rs - 
hero-sons of Waetla marched across the sky, and 
poetry only hardened into prose when they trans- 
ferred the name of Watling Street to the great 
track-way which passed athwart the island they had 
won, from London to Chester. The stones of Wey- 
land's Smithy still recall the days when the new set- 
tlers told one another on the conquered ground the 
wondrous tale they had brought with them from 
their German home — the tale of the godlike smith 
Weland, who forged the arms that none could blunt 
or break, 1 just as they told around Wadanbury and 
Wadanhlaew the strange tale of Wade and his boat. 2 
When men christened mere and tree with Scyld's 
name, at Scyldsmere and Styldstreow, they must 
have been familiar with the story of the godlike 
child who came over the waters to found the royal 
line of the Gewissas. 3 So a name like Hnaefs-scylf 
shows that the tale of Hnaef was then a living part 
of English mythology ; 4 and a name like Aylesbury 
may preserve the last trace of the legend told of 
Weland's brother, the sun-archer ^Egil. 

But it is only in broken fragments that this mass 
of early faith and early poetry still lives for us, in a 

1 For Weland's story, see Exeter Book, p. 367 ; and Kemble, Sax- 
ons in England, vol. i. p. 421. 

2 For Wade, see Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 420. 

3 For Scyld's tale, see Beowulf, w. 7-104. iEthelheard, book iii. 
Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, lib. ii. p. 116. Kemble, Saxons in Eng- 
land, vol. i. p. 414. 

4 Hnaef, see Beowulf, line 2130 et seq. 

II 



men. 



: 5 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. name, in the gray stones of a cairn, or in snatches 
The settle- of verse embodied in our older song. Like all an- 
thTcon- cient religion, indeed, such a faith, linking itself as it 
querors. jjj w j t j 1 tne new se ttlers mainly through the blood 
T hoSm °^ their kings, embodied only in nature -myths or 
English- poetic legends, and without any moral significance 
for the guidance of men, had in it little of what the 
modern world means by a religion ; and the faint 
traces of worship or of priesthood which we find in 
later history show how lightly it clung to the na- 
tional life. There were temples, indeed, as we see 
in Kent, in Northumbria, and in East Anglia alike 1 
—rough wooden buildings in a hallowed enclosure, 
whose name of frith-geard, or peace-yard, tells of a 
right of sanctuary, and whose inner shrine enclosed 
images or emblems of the gods with altars before 
them. But at the conversion such buildings were 
changed, with no apparent shock to the popular 
conscience, into Christian churches ; and that right 
of sanctuary which the frith-geard possessed still 
clung to it under its new name of church -yard. 
There were priests, too, whom custom forbade to 
wield the warrior's weapon or to mount the war- 
rior's horse, but who played a prominent part not 
only in the religious, but in the civil, life of their 
fellow-tribesmen." The story, however, of the con- 
version of Britain to Christianity, which we have 
soon to follow, shows how little religious weight 
or influence these priests possessed. Only one of 
them, indeed, is mentioned as playing a part in the 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. i. 30; ii. 13, 15. 

2 Eddi's Life of Wilfred, cap. 1 (Raine, Historians of Church of 
York, p. 20). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



163 



religious change, and he is an" active agent in pro- CHAP - Iv - 

moting it. 1 TheSettle- 

The weak hold of their religion on the new set- thecon- 
tlers strikes us as forcibly when we see how feebly querors- 
their faith stamped itself on the face of the conquered SoiL 
country. Woden, indeed, the god of the race, left 
his name everywhere — on brook and pool and ford, 
on tree and barrow. 2 We hear his name in Wans- 
brook or Woden's brook, in Wanspool and Wans- 
ford, as in Woden's tree or Wanstreow, and Woden's 
barrow or Wanborough. Above all, as the border- 
god, he hallows the boundary-lines that part tribe 
from tribe, or conquered from conqueror. The long 
dyke that stretches from a point just south of 
Malmesbury by Bath to the Bristol Channel, which 
had been a bound of the Belgas, and served for a 
while as a bound of the West Saxon, still retains 
the name which the last conquerors gave it, of the 
Woden's Dyke or Wansdyke. At an earlier stage 
of their advance, the Gewissas had halted on the 
crest of the great escarpment of the Wiltshire Downs, 
and here Wanborough, looking out over the valley 
of the White Horse, marks the limits of Cynric's 
conquests. 3 But of his fellow-deities the traces are 
few. Thunder leaves signs of his worship in places 
like Thundersfleld or Thundersley ; and Pol, as the 
god whom the Northmen called Balder may have 



: Coifi, Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 13. 

2 I follow here Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. cap. 1 2. 

3 We may add Wanborough, on the Hog's - Back of the north 
downs, a spot which, " in all probability, has been a sacred site for 
every religion which has been received into Britain " (Kemble, 
vol. i. p. 344). 



1 64 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. been styled on English ground, still lingers about 
The settle- us in our Polsteads and Poldons, our Polsleys and 

the^on- Polthorns. Even the lesser deities or fiends of 

querors. popular fancy found hardly more numerous homes. 
Here and there a few names preserve the memo- 
ry of the sacred stone or mere or tree or mound 
where men reverenced, of old, Scyld, the hero-child; 
or ^gil, the sun -archer; or shuddered at Grendel, 
the fiend. But, like the names of greater gods, 
such names are thinly scattered over the soil. We 
feel as we glean them that we are not in presence 
of an indigenous religion ; and it may be that in 
the weakness of its grip on the soil to which it had 
been. transplanted we see one, at least, of the causes 
why. the faith of the English yielded so easily to the 
Christian missionaries. 

TheEng- Of their military life we naturally know more than 

lish as J 

warriors, of their religious. We meet them first as seamen, 
and, in spite of hasty assertions to the contrary, there 
never was a time from that age to this when Eng- 
lishmen lost their love for the sea. 1 Everywhere 
throughout Beowulf's Song, as everywhere through- 
out the life that it pictures, we catch the salt whiff 
of the sea. The warrior is as proud of his sea-craft 
as of his war-craft ; sword in hand, he plunges into 
the waves to meet walrus and sea-lion ; he tells of 
his whale-chase amid the icy waters of the north. 2 
The same seafaring temper shows itself in later 
days in the very names of the bark that traverses 
the sea. In the fond playfulness of English verse the 

1 The common statement which attributes our love of the sea to 
the coming of the Danes is a simple error. 

2 Beowulf, w. 1 070-1120. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^5 

ship became the " wave-floater," the " foam-necked," chap^iv. 
"like a bird" as it skimmed the wave-crest, "like aTheSettie- 

ment of 

swan " as its curved prow breasted the swan-road the con- 
of the sea. With their landing in Britain, however, qu ^ rs - 
the purely seafaring life of the pirates was over, but 
they showed themselves none the less formidable as 
warriors on land. In his own eyes, indeed, every 
one of the conquerors of Britain was, above all, a 
warrior. The real opening of his life, his passing 
from boyhood to manhood, was the day when, at the 
age of fifteen, 1 the delivery of arms to him made Him 
a full member of the folk, as it made him a warrior 
of the host, or folk in arms. The armor of such 
a' freeman has been preserved for us in the grave- 
mounds which are scattered over the face of Eng- 
land : the coat of ringed mail ; 2 the long iron sword 3 
with its single edge, its hilt curiously wrought of 
silver or bronze, or scored with mystic runes, 4 its 
wooden scabbard tipped and edged with bronze; 

1 At twelve (LI. Hloth. et Ead. 6) ; then at twelve (iEthelstan II. 
cap. 1) ; and then at fifteen (^Ethelstan VI. cap. 12). (Thorpe's An- 
cient Laws, vol. i. pp. 31, 199, 241.) 

s See Beowulf, v. 673, for the warrior's " gray sarks ;" and cf. Laws 
of Ine, p. 54 (Thorpe's Ancient Laws, vol. i. p. 139). 

3 " In the large broadsword may be recognized the ' spatha ' in 
common use by many of the Roman auxiliaries, and by the Ro- 
mans themselves in later times. From their weight and length, they 
could only be wielded by horsemen " (Roach Smith, on "Anglo-Saxon 
Remains at Faversham," etc., Archseol. Cantiana, i. 47). " The spear 
may be called the national weapon" (ibid.). In the English grave- 
grounds two kinds of spears are found — one like the Roman pilum ; 
another smaller and slighter, like the framea of Tacitus, which was 
part of the equipment of horsemen. The spear was valued above 
the sword. Ine's Laws, p. 29 (Thorpe's Ancient Laws, vol. i. p. 121). 

* Beowulf, v. 3393 : " So was on the surface of the bright gold, 
with Runic letters rightly marked, set, and laid, for whom that sword 
was first made, with hilt twisted and variegated like a snake." 



j 66 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. the short seax, at once dagger and knife, slung like 
me settle- the sword from the girdle; the long ashen spear; 

the n con- the small round "war-board," or shield, of the yellow 

querors. h m e-wood, with its iron boss, which was held in the 
warrior's hand ; the skullcap, or helmet, with the 
iron-wrought figure of a boar above it. From the 
day of his arming with arms such as these, the train- 
ing of the freeman was in war. 1 His very sports 
were of warlike sort. The wolf was still common ; 
the bear yet lingered in the woods ; the wild boar, 
roused from its lair, rushed madly on the huntsman ; 
the wild ox stood at bay in the forest depths. Often 
the chase was a mimic war ; the wood was surround- 
ed, and wild beast and deer were driven by the serfs 
into high-fenced enclosures, where the nobler hunts- 
men with bow and hunting-spear slew them at will. 

Life itself But this mimicry of war had soon to be exchanged 
for war itself. The world of these men was, in fact, 
a world of warfare ; tribe warred with tribe, and vil- 
lage with village ; even within the village itself feuds 
parted household from household, and passions of 
hatred and vengeance were handed on from father 
to son. To live at all, indeed, in this early w T orld, it 
was needful, if not to fight, at any rate to be ready 
to fight. It was by his own right hand that a man 
kept life and goods together; it was his own right 
hand that guarded him from wrong, or avenged him 
if wrong were done. Law had not as yet trodden 

1 For early English arms, see Wright, The Celt, the Roman, and 
the Saxon, pp. 470-478. The type of arms remained unaltered till 
the coming of the Danes. The axe, which was common enough 
among the Franks, is but seldom found even in Kent ; elsewhere 
it is of the rarest occurrence. Arrow - heads, too, though some- 
times found, are rare. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. Y fa 

the blood-feud underfoot, or undertaken the task of chap. rv. 
carrying its own dooms into effect; it had done lit- The setue- 
tle more than give form to the right of personal Se^on- 
vengeance. 1 And besides the world of social strife, querors - 
there was the wider field of public war, the fight of 
tribe with tribe, and people with -people. It was by- 
no chance that the folk, when it gathered to the 
folk-moot, gathered in arms, 2 that even the deliber- 
ations of the assembled tribesmen were the " rede " 
of warriors, and that the " ay, ay," with which they 
approved the counsel of the ealdormen was half- 
drowned by the clash of spear on shield. The very 
form of a people was wholly military. The folk- 
moot was, in fact, the war host, the gathering of 
every freeman of the tribe in arms. The head of 
the folk, whether ealdorman or king, was the leader 
whom the host chose to command it. Its Wite- 
nagemote, or meeting of wise men, was the host's , 
council of war, the gathering of those ealdormen who 
had brought the men of their villages to the field. ■ 

The host was formed by levies from the various The host. 
districts of the tribe, the larger of which may have 
owed their name of " hundreds " to the hundred war- 
riors which each originally sent to it. 3 In historic 
times, however, the regularity of such a military or- 
ganization, if it ever existed, had passed away, and 
the quotas varied with the varying custom of each 
district. But men, whether many or few, were still 
due from each district to the host, and a cry of war 
at once called tun -reeve and hundred -reeve with 

1 " Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law," cap. iv. Legal Procedure. 
8 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 32. 
3 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 81, 112. 



!68 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. their followers to the field. However rude such a 
The settle- military organization may seem, it had in it qualities 
ttwcon- which no soldier will undervalue. Each group of 
querors. warr i r-kinsmen who fought in loose order round 
ealdorman or lord was bound together by the tie of 
blood, by the mutual trust of men who had been life- 
long comrades, by a life-long practice in arms, and 
by the discipline that comes of obedience habitually 
rendered to one who was recognized as a natural 
chief. But the strength of an English army lay not 
only in these groups of villagers. Mingled with 
them were the voluntary war bands that gathered 
round distinguished chiefs. From the earliest times 
of German society, it had been the wont of young 
men greedy of honor or seeking training in arms 
to bind themselves as " comrades " to king or chief. 1 
The leader whom they chose gave them horses, 
arms, a seat in his mead hall, and gifts from his 
hoard. The "comrade," on the other hand — the 
gesith or thegn, as he was called — bound himself 
to follow and fight for his lord. The principle of 
personal dependence as distinguished from the war- 
rior's general duty to the folk at large was embodied 
in the thegn. " Chieftains fight for victory," says 
Tacitus ; " comrades for their chieftain." When one 
of Beowulf's " comrades " saw his lord hard bestead, 
" he minded him of the homestead he had given him, 
of the folk-right he gave him as his father had it; 
nor might he hold back then." Snatching up sword 
and shield, he called on his fellow-thegns to follow 
him to the fight. " I mind me of the day," he cried, 

1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 27. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



169 



" when we drank the mead — the day we gave pledge chap, iv. 
to our lord in the beer -hall as he gave us these The settie- 
rings, our pledge that we would pay him back our Secon- 
war-gear, our helms and our hard swords, if need querors - 
befell him. Unmeet is it, methinks, that we should 
bear back our shields to our home unless we guard 
our lord's life." 1 

It was this military organization of the tribe that Organim- 
gave from the first its iorm to the civil organization, state. 
In each of the little kingdoms which rose on the 
wreck of Britain, the host would camp on the land it 
had won, and the divisions of the host supplied here, 
as in its older home, a rough groundwork of local 
distribution. The land occupied by the hundred 
warriors who formed the unit of military organiza- 
tion became, perhaps, the local hundred ; though it is 
needless to attach any notion of precise uniformity, 
either in the number of settlers or in the area of 
their settlement, to such a process as this, any more 
than to the army organization which the process of 
distribution reflected. 2 From the large amount of 
public land which we find existing afterwards, it has 
been conjectured, with some probability, that the 
number of settlers was far too small to occupy the 
whole of the country at their disposal, and this un- 
occupied ground became "folk -land," the common 
property of the tribe, as at a later time of the na- 
tion. 3 What ground was actually occupied may 
have been assigned to each group and each family 
in the group by lot ; and the little knots of kinsmen 



1 Beowulf, v. 5259 et seq. s Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 81, 82. 

3 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 82. 



I y THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. drew again together in " tun " and " ham " beside the 
The settle- Thames or the Trent, as they had settled beside the 
ttocon. Elbe or the Weser. But the peculiar shape which 
querors. ^he ci^^il organization of these communities assumed 
was determined by a principle familiar to the Ger- 
manic races and destined to exercise a vast influence 
on the future of mankind. This was the principle 
of representation. The four or ten villagers who 
followed the reeve of each township to the general 
muster of the hundred were held to represent the 
whole body of the township from whence they came. 1 
Their voice was its voice, their doing its doing, their 
pledge its pledge. The hundred-moot — a moot which 
was made by this gathering of the representatives of 
the townships that lay within its bounds — became in 
this way a court of appeal from the moots of each 
separate village, as well as of arbitration in dispute 
between township and township. The judgment of 
graver crimes and of life or death fell to its share ; 
while it necessarily possessed the same right of law- 
making for the hundred that the village-moot pos- 
sessed for each separate village. 2 And as hundred- 

1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 103. 

2 For the hundred-moot, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 119, 120. He 
adds, " In the south of England the names of the hundreds are often 
derived from those of the central towns ; but in the midland and 
northern districts they seem like echoes of a wilder and more prim- 
itive society. The Yorkshire wapentake of Skyrack recalls the 
Shire Oak as the place of meeting; so in Derbyshire we have Ap- 
pletree ; in Hertfordshire, Edwinstree ; in Herefordshire, Webtree 
and Greytree ; in Worcestershire, Dodingtree ; in Leicestershire, 
Gartree. Osgodcross, Ewcross, Staincross, Buckross, mark centres 
of jurisdiction which received names after the acceptance of Chris- 
tianity. Claro or Clarhow, in Yorkshire, was the moot-hill of its 
wapentake ; similarly, Leicestershire has Sparkinho ; Norfolk, 
Greenho and Grimshoe ; and Lincolnshire, Calnodshoe. Others 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. I y 1 

moot stood above town-moot, so far above the hun- chap. iv. 
dred-moot stood the folk-moot, the general muster The settie- 
of the people in arms, at once war host and highest Xecon- 
law-court and general parliament of the tribe. But, querors - 
whether in folk-moot or hundred-moot, the consti- 
tutional forms, the forms of deliberation and decision, 
were the same. In each the priests proclaimed si- 
lence; the ealdormen of higher blood spoke; groups 
of freemen from each township stood round, shaking 
their spears in assent, clashing shields in applause, 
settling matters in the end by loud shouts of " Ay " 
or " Nay." l 

It seems probable that the conquering tribes had The king. 
hitherto known nothing of kings in their own father- 
land, where each was satisfied in peace time with the 
customary government of hundred-reeve or ealdor- 
man, while it gathered at fighting times under war 
leaders whom it chose for each campaign. But in 
the long and obstinate warfare which they waged 
against the Britons, it was needful to find a common 
leader whom the various tribes engaged in conquests, 
such as those of Wessex or Mercia, might follow ; 
and the ceaseless character of a struggle which left 
few intervals of rest or peace raised these leaders 
into a higher position than that of temporary chief- 
tains. It was, no doubt, from this cause that we find 
Hengest and his son yEse raised to the kingdom in 
Kent, or ^Elle in Sussex, or Cerdic and Cynric 

preserve the names of some ancient lord or hero, as the Worcester- 
shire Oswaldslaw, and the Lincolnshire Aslacoe ; or the holy well, 
as the Yorkshire Hallikeld. The Suffolk Thingoe preserves a rem- 
iniscence of the court itself as the Thing." 
1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 32. 



172 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. among the West Saxons. But, sprung as he was 
The settle- from war, the king was no mere war leader, nor was 
tJfcon- he chosen on the ground of warlike merit. His 
querors. ffi ce was no t military, but national ; his creation 
marked the moment when the various groups of 
conquering warriors felt the need of a collective and 
national life ; and the ground of his choice was his 
descent from the national god, Woden. As repre- 
senting this national life, his rank was a permanent, 
not a temporary, one ; and the association of son with 
father in the new kingship marked the hereditary 
character which distinguished it from the office of 
an ealdorman. 1 The change was undoubtedly a 
great one, but it was less than the modern concep- 
tion of kingship would lead us to imagine. Hered- 
itary as the succession was within a single house, 
each successive king was still the free choice of his 
people, and for centuries to come it was held within 
a people's right to pass over a claimant too weak or 
too wicked for the throne. In war, indeed, the king 
was supreme ; but in peace his power was narrowly 
bounded by the customs of his people and the rede 
of his wise men. Justice was not as yet the king's 
justice ; it was the justice of village and hundred and 
folk in town-moot and hundred-moot and folk-moot. 
It was only with the assent of the wise men that the 
king could make laws and declare war, and assign 
public lands and name public officers. Above all, 
should his will be to break through the free customs 
of his people, he was without the means of putting 
his will into action, for the one force he could call on 

1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 75-77. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



173 



was the host, and the host was the people itself in chap, iv. 

arms. The Settle- 

Directly, therefore, the new kingship made as yet theTcon- 
little change in the political life of the conquering qQerors - 
peoples; but indirectly it brought about from the Eorla j ld 
first a great social change. An English community 
knew but two orders of men — the ceorl or the free- 
man, and the eorl or the noble. 1 The freeman was 
the base of the village society. He was the "free- 
necked man," whose long hair floated over a neck 
which had never bowed to a lord. He was the 
" weaponed man," who alone bore spear and sword, 
and who alone preserved that right of self-redress or 
private war which in such a state of society formed 
the main check upon lawless outrage. 2 But the so- 
cial centre of the village was the eorl (or, as he was 
sometimes called, the setheling), whose homestead 
rose high above the lowlier dwellings of the ceorls. 
It is possible that in the original formation of Ger- 
man society the eorl represented the first settler in 
the waste, while the ceorls sprang from descendants 
of this early settler who had in various ways forfeited 
their claim to a share in the original homestead, or, 
more probably, from incomers into the village who 
had since settled round it and been admitted to a 
share in the land and freedom of the community. 
But whatever may have been the origin of the dis- 
tinction between freeman and noble, it had become " 
a fixed element of their social order at the time when 
Engle and Saxon crossed into Britain. In every 

1 Lset and slave, of whom we speak later, did not belong to the 
community. 

2 Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 131. 



174 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap^iv. n ew settlement the eorl was distinguished from his 
T&e settle- fellow-villagers by his wealth and his nobler blood; 
the n con- he was held by them in an hereditary reverence, and 
querors. ^ was f rom n i m anc [ n -[ s fellow-nobles that host lead- 
ers, whether of the hundred or the tribe, were chosen 
in times of war. 
The thegn. But with the rise of kingship a new social distinc- 
tion began to grow up on the ground, not of heredi- 
tary rank in the community, but of service done to 
the king. It was from among the chiefs whose war 
band was strongest that the leaders of the host were 
commonly chosen; and as these leaders grew into 
kings, the number of their thegns naturally increased. 
The rank of the " comrades," too, rose with the rise 
of their lord. The king's thegns were his body- 
guard, the one force ever ready to carry out his 
will. They were his nearest and most constant 
counsellors. As the gathering of petty tribes into 
larger kingdoms swelled the number of eorls in each 
realm, and in a corresponding degree diminished 
their social importance, it raised in equal measure 
the rank of the king's thegns. A post among them 
was soon coveted and won by the greatest and no- 
blest. Their service was rewarded by exemption 
from the general jurisdiction of hundred -moot or 
folk-moot, for it was part of a thegn's meed for his 
service that he should be judged only by the lord he 
served. Other meed was found in grants of public 
land which made thegns a local nobility, no longer 
bound to actual service in the king's household or 
in the king's war band, but still bound to him by 
personal ties of allegiance far closer than those 
which bound an eorl to the chosen war leader of his 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 175 

tribe. In a word, thegnhood contained within itself chap^iv. 
the germ of the later feudalism which was to battle The settle- 
so fiercely with the Teutonic freedom out of which thfcon- 

., 1 querors. 

it grew. 

To view, however, the new settler in Britain sim- The town- 

1 • 1 ship. 

ply as a warrior would be false and incomplete. 
In the old world, the divorce which modern society 
has established between the soldier and the citizen, 
the fighter and the toiler, did not exist. No chasm 
parted war from civil life ; the solemn arming made 
the young Englishman not only a warrior, but a free- 
man, 2 a man of the folk, a tiller with a right to his 
share in field and pasture and waste, a ruler of his 
village, with his own due place in village-moot and 
hundred-moot. The unit of social life, indeed, was 
the cluster of such farmers' homes, each set in its 
own little croft, which made up the township, or the 
tun. The tun was surrounded by an earthen mound 
tipped with a stockade or quickset hedge, as well as 
defended externally by a ditch ; 3 and each township 
was thus a ready-made fortress in war, while in peace 
its entrenchments were serviceable in the feuds of 
village with village, or house with house. The im- 
portance of its defences, indeed, was shown by the 
customary law which forced every dweller within 



1 For thegnhood, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 27, 28, 175—185 ; Kem- 
ble, Saxons in England, i. 162 et seq. 

2 " The young men are, till they are admitted to the use of arms, 
members of the family only, not of the State " (Stubbs, Const. Hist, 
i. 24). 

3 " The tun," says Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. i. 93, note), " is 
originally the enclosure or hedge, whether of the single farm or the 
enclosed village ; as the burh is the fortified house of the power- 
ful man." 



176 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. them to take part in their rearing and repair. 1 In- 
The settle- side the mound lay the homes of the villagers, the 
X?con- farmsteads, with their barns and cattle stalls ; and in 
querors. fae centre of them rose the sacred tree or mound 
where the village with its elders met in the tun-moot, 
which gave order to their social and industrial life. 
Outside the mound, in close neighborhood to the 
village, lay the home pastures and folds, where the 
calves and lambs of individual cultivators were reared. 
In these, and in the " yrfeland," or " family estate," 
held apart from the lands of his fellow-freeman by the 
setheling, or noble, 2 we find the first traces of a per- 
sonal property strongly in contrast with the common 
holding which prevailed through the rest of the town- 
ship. 3 Beyond and around these home pastures lay 
the village ploughland, generally massed together in 
three or four large " fields," each of which was broken 
by raised balks into long strips of soil that were dis- 
tributed, in turn, among the village husbandmen. 
The whole was enclosed by a borderland or mark, 
which formed the common pasture where flock and 
herd could be turned out by every freeman to graze, 
though in numbers determined by usage or the rede 
of the village-moot. 4 

1 Laws of vEthelstan I. cap. 13; Thorpe's Laws and Institutes, i. 
207 ; Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 87. 

2 Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (Boston, 1876), p. 55, etc. 

3 Nasse, in his Land - community of the Middle Ages (Cobden 
Club, 1 87 O, pp. 15-30, gives a full account of this village system of 
common holding in early England. 

* Besides the free township, there were, no doubt, from the earli- 
est times, townships which had grown up round the house of a no- 
ble, or setheling, and which were tenanted by his dependants. In 
such cases, however, as yet, the village organization was little af- 
fected by the lord's neighborhood. He, no doubt, named its reeve ; 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



177 



Its boun- 
daries. 



For the most part, each township lay, no doubt, chap, iv. 
within the area of older British or Roman settle- The settle- 
ments, but its bounds were no longer marked by the thecon- 
measurements and the landmarks of the Roman q 
surveyor. As in many of our modern settlements, 
where population and property have hardly come 
into being, the boundary-line could only be drawn 
from one natural object to another. In a country 
where woodland was so frequent, the mark-tree could 
not fail to be common, 1 and the need of forming a 
boundary-line may have combined with some sur- 
vival of the older tree-worship in the dedication of 
such objects to hero or lord. We hear of Scyld's 
tree and Nicor's thorn, of Tiw's thorn or Freya's 
tree, as landmarks of districts or estates ; the special 
god of border and mark gave his name to the Wo- 
den's oak or the Woden's 2 stock; while sometimes 
what must have been a sacred group of trees, as in 
the Kentish Sevenoaks, forms a starting-point for 
the border lines of more than one district. The 
choice of burial-mounds or burial-places, which was 
almost as common, may have been dictated by like 

but the reeve and the men of the township judged according to 
custom, and distributed lands as in other townships (Stubbs, Const. 
Hist. i. 93, 94). The land itself, however, was in such a case the lord's, 
and not the common freehold of the villagers ; and would, no doubt, 
be held from the first by them subject to service on the portion of 
which the lord held in his personal possession. In later times the 
dependent townships became an important body ; but in the first 
days of the settlement they were probably exceptional. Palgrave, 
however, regarded them as from the first the common form of Eng- 
lish holding (Commonwealth, i. 65). 

1 The trees most frequently named in these land-boundaries are 
the oak, ash, beech, thorn, elder, lime, and birch (Kemble, Saxons 
in England, i. 52, note). 

2 Kemble, Cod. Dip. pp. 174, 262, 268, 287, 436, 496. 

12 



1 7 8 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



The free 
mail's 
home. 



chap. iv. mingled motives of convenience and religion; but, 

The settle- for the most part, the boundary track runs naturally 

thTcon- enough from one feature of the landscape to another 

querors. _f rom ^g « marked oak," along the " marked eaves," 

or edges of forest or copse, by the " border brook," 

and over the hero's " hlaew," or burial-mound, to the 

" gray stones " that pointed back to a primeval eld. 1 

If we pass from the township to the homes within 
its bounds, we see the freeman himself in that outer 
garb of peace and industry which has been brought 
down to us by the ploughman and peasant of to-day, 
in his smock-frock, a coarse linen overcoat that fell 
to the knees, and whose* tight sleeves and breast were 
worked with elaborate embroidery. 2 Feet and legs 
were wrapped in linen bands, cross - gartered and 
party-colored, as high as the knees ; 3 a hood shelter- 
ed the head in winter-tide ; and among the nobles 
or wealthier ceorls, a short cloak of blue cloth, often 
embroidered with fanciful figure-work, and fastened 
at the shoulder with a costly buckle, was thrown over 
the frock for warmth or ornament. 4 The house of 



1 Kemble, Saxons in England, ii. 52, note 4. 

2 It was only in texture and color that this dress differed in dif- 
ferent classes of society. It was either of linen or wool (Baeda, 
Hist. Eccl. iv. 19). The noble was distinguished from the ceorl by 
his embroidered belt and golden sword-hilt (Kemble, Saxons in 
England, ii. p. 145). 

3 Hosen were sometimes made of hide softened with grease or 
fat (Baeda, Vit. Cuthb. cap. 18). 

* The love of bright and varied colors was strong in both men 
and women ; in later days monasticism had no harder battle to 
fight than in bringing its votaries to content themselves with the 
undyed vestments required by its rule. (See Cuthbert's struggle for 
this at Lindisfarne ; Baeda, Opera Minora, Stevenson, p. 82.) And 
down to the very era of the Danish wars, saints and councils were 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. j yg 

such a villager naturally varied in size and impor- chap. iv. 
tance with the wealth and rank of its owner. Dwell- The settl- 
ings were everywhere of wood. 1 Even in the wealth- thTcon- 
ier Roman villas only the substructures seem to have querors- 
been of stone or brick ; and the new settlers, accus- 
tomed to wooden dwellings in their own land, found 
in Britain a wealth of forest and woodland which 
supplied abundant material for construction near 
every township. 2 The centre of the homestead was 
the hall, with the hearth-fire in the midst of it, 3 whose 
smoke made its escape as best it could through a 
hole in the roof. The hall, indeed, was the common 
living -place of all the dwellers within the house. 
Here the " board," set up on trestles when needed, 
furnished a rough table for the family meal ; and 
when the board was cleared away, the women bore 4 
the wooden beer-cups or drinking-horns to the house- 
master and his friends as they sat on the settles or 
benches ranged round the walls, 6 while the gleeman 
sang his song, or the harp was passed around from 



busy in denouncing the silken hoods and the gayly - colored leg- 
bands, which broke even the garb of the English clergy. 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 14; iii. 16, 17. 

2 As the country cleared, the " silva infructuosa," or wood reserved 
on every farm for building and fencing, became of increasing im- 
portance, as is shown by the laws against cutting down or burning 
trees, as well as by the inclusion of such woods in the Domesday 
survey. 3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 10. 

* Baeda, Vit. Cuthb. cap. 29 ; Hist. Eccl. v. 4. 

5 For washing of guests' hands and feet, see Baeda, Vit. Cuthb. 
cap. 29. For the banquet and drinking-bouts, Eddi, Life of Wilfred, 
cap. 16 : "convivium trium dierum et noctium." 

6 For gleemen and buffoons, Beowulf, v. 2134 et seq. A council 
at Gloucester in 747 classes among " ludicrarum artium " those of 
" potarum, citharistarum, musicorum, scurrorum." Haddan and 
Stubbs, Councils, iii. 369. 



jg THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. hand to hand. 1 Here, too, when night came and the 
The settle- fire died down, was the common sleeping-place, and 
thTcoif- men lay down to rest on the bundles of straw which 
querors. t ^ e y ^d s trewn about its floor. 2 
The farm. Beside the hall stood chambers for women and the 
household, while around the farm-yard were stable 
and threshing-floor and barn. With so thin and 
scattered a population, and at a time when even in- 
ternal trade had hardly begun to exist, the homestead 
had to be in the main its own provider; the grain 
had not only to be sown and reaped, but to be made 
into bread in the household, as the flax was not only 
gathered, but woven into garments. To woman fell 
much of the outer, and almost all this inner, farm- 
work. It was she who milked the kine and shore 
the sheep, who made the cheese and combed the 
wool and beat the flax ; while her name of the 
" spinster " still reminds us how she spun the thread 
and wove the wool of every garment. 3 The build- 
ings in which this work went on lay round each 
larger homestead — the mill for grinding the " grits " 
or rough corn and the finer wheat-meal ; 4 the oven 
where the loaf was baked, common loaf or alms loaf, 
or white bread of pure wheat, or raised loaf and 
cake; 5 the sheds for storing wool and honey and wax; 6 

1 See Caedmon's story, ftostea. Dunstan in later days carries his 
harp in his hand on visits, and loves " carmina gentilitatis " and 
" nsenia." 

2 Beowulf, w. 1381-1385. 

3 Among the poetic names for woman was " freodowebbe," the 
"weaver of peace," which reminds us of her subtler influence as 
reconciler in the home (Beowulf, v. 3880). 

4 Cod. Dip. pp. 1 66, 226. 
s Cod. Dip. pp. 226, 235. 

6 Cod. Dip. pp. 231-235, 288, 313. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



151 



the malt-house and the brewery, with its bright ale chap, iv. 
and mild ale and smooth ale and beer; 1 the dairy The settie- 
with its butter and its cheese. 2 The outer work thecon- 
of the farm fell upori the freeman and his serfs. i uerors - 
Oxherd and cowherd, shepherd and goatherd, the 
swineherd who drove the hogs into forest and wood- 
land to feed on the oak-mast, the barn-man and the 
sower, were serfs in wealthier households, or on the 
estate of the lord who had gathered a township 
about him; but in the free townships the poorer 
freeman must have been his own laborer, and the 
toil necessitated by the system of common culture 
was severe. The open lands of the common pasture 
were often far from any homestead, so that through 
the long winter nights, from Martinmas to Easter, 
the villagers had to take their turn in folding and 
guarding the horses and cattle that pastured on 
them. The need of fencing off the common meadow 
into separate grass fields when the grass began to 
grow afresh in the spring was a yet more serious 
burden ; 3 and besides all these, the villager had to 
help in the maintenance of mound and ditch around 
the townships, as well as to be ready when occasion 

1 We hear of all of these varieties as early as the seventh century, 
as well as of Welsh ale and sweetened Welsh ale (Cod. Dip. pp. 166, 
1088). Wine may have been introduced by the Christian mission- 
aries, but it was in use in very early times (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. 
i. 1). 

2 Cod. Dip. pp. 135, 288. Ine's Laws, sec. 70; Thorpe's Laws and 
Institutes, vol. i. p. 147. 

3 " If ceorls have a common meadow, or other partible land, to 
fence, and some have fenced their part, some have not, and strange 
cattle come in and eat up the common corn or grass, let those go 
who own the gap and make compensation to the others " (Laws of 
Ine, iii. 42 ; Thorpe's Laws and Institutes, vol. i. p. 129). 



!g 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. called to join the hue and cry in chase of stolen cat- 
The settle- tie, or to follow the reeve of his township to hun- 

t™e E con- dred-moot or folk-moot. 

querors. The dwellers in such a township were not men 

The Mn. w ho had casually come together. As the blood-bond 
gave its form to English warfare, so it gave its form 
to English society. Kinsmen, as we have seen, 
fought side by side in the hour of battle, and the 
feelings of honor and discipline which held the host 
together were drawn from the common duty of every 
man in each little group of warriors to his house. 
And as they fought side by side on the field, so they 
dwelt side by side on the soil. Harling abocle by 
Harling, and Billing by Billing, and each "wick" and 
"ham" and "stead" and "tun" took its name from 
the kinsmen who dwelt together in it. In this way, 
the house or ham of the Billings was Billingham, 
and the tun or township of the Harlings was Har- 
lington. 1 The life of the individual freeman, indeed, 
was all but lost in that of the family. 2 When he was 
a child, his kinsmen were bound by custom to watch 
over and guard him from wrong, even should the 

1 Professor Stubbs (Const. Hist. vol. i. p. 92) says, " In England it 
is probable that all the primitive villages in whose name the patro- 
nymic syllable " ing " occurs were originally colonized by communi- 
ties united either really by blood or by the belief in a common de- 
scent." See, too, Kemble, Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 234, etc. ; and 
Robertson, Scotland under Early Kings, vol. ii. App. F, " The Kin." 
The settlement of these groups of kinsmen was probably determined 
by lot. When Cuthbert's relics found a home at Durham, the wood- 
land around was parted in this way among the new settlers. See 
Sim. Dur. Hist. Dunelm. Eccl. sec. 37 : " Eradicata undique silva et 
unicuique mansionibus sorte distributis." Larger divisions of coun- 
try, such as the Rapes of Sussex, bear traces of the same mode of 
distribution. 

2 Essays in Anglo-Saxon Law (Boston, 1871), p. 121 et seq. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. jg„ 

wrong be at his father's hand. When he wedded, it chap. iv. 
was among the kinsfolk that he had to find him The settle- 
sureties and witnesses. If a blood-feud sprang up, theCon- 
the kin were bound to give life and limb in his de- querors - 
fence. Should he be slain, it was for them to avenge 
his slaying. Order and law itself rested not on a 
man's personal action, but on the blood-bond that 
knit him to his kin. Every outrage was held to have 
been done by all who were linked in blood to the 
doer of it ; every crime to have been done against 
all who were linked in blood to the sufferer from it. 
From this sense of the value of the family bond as a 
means of restraining the wrong-doer by forces which 
the tribe as a whole did not as yet possess sprang 
the first rude forms of English justice. The free- 
man's life and the freeman's limb had each its legal 
price. 1 " Eye for eye," and " limb for limb," ran the 
rough customary code, or for each fair damages. 
This price of life or limb, however, was paid not by 
the wrong-doer to the man he wronged, but by the 
kin or family of the wrong-doer to the kin or family 
of the wronged. The loss, and so the right to re- 
venge, or to the " blood-wite " by which that right 
could be bought off, were the loss and the right not 
of the individual freeman, but of his kin. Each kins- 
man was his kinsman's keeper, bound to protect him 
from wrong, to hinder him from wrong-doing, and to 
suffer with him and pay for him if wrong were done. 
So fully was this principle recognized that even if 
any man was charged before his fellow -tribesmen 

1 The Laws of ^Ethelberht, the first English writing -down of 
customary law, are little more than a list of the fines due for harm 
to life and limb. 



1 84 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. iv. with crime, his kinsfolk still remained, in fact, his sole 
Tiie settle- judges; for it was by their solemn oath of his inno- 

the^on- cence or his guilt that he had to stand or fall. 

querors. ^^ e ^ e of blood, however, was widened by the 

The land, larger tie of land. Land with the German race 
seems at a very early time to have become every- 
where the accompaniment of full freedom. 1 The 
freeman was strictly the freeholder, and the exercise 
of his full rights as a free member of the communi- 
ty to which he belonged became inseparable from 
the possession of his " holding " in it. But property 
had not as yet reached the stage of absolutely per- 
sonal possession. The woodland and pasture-land 
of an English village were still undivided, and every 
free villager had the right of turning into it his cat- 
tle or swine. The meadow-land lay, in like manner, 
open and undivided from hay-harvest to spring. It 
was only when grass began to grow afresh that the 
common meadow was fenced off into grass-fields, 
one for each household in the village ; and when 
hay-harvest was over, fence and division were at an 
end again. The ploughland alone was permanent- 
ly allotted in equal shares both of corn-land and fal- 
low-land to the families of the freemen, though even 
the ploughland was subject to fresh division as the 
number of claimants grew greater or less. 2 

1 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 84, 199. 

2 Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 56, 57 ; and see Nasse, Land-community of 
the Middle Ages, pp. 15-30. Traces of this common culture lasted 
here and there to very recent times. Some thirty years ago, on the 
Yorkshire wolds, " each farmer owned a certain number of ' ox- 
gangs ' (a word still to be heard now and then from the mouths of 
old laborers), and lines of ancient balks and ploughlands, some 
straight, some curiously curved, still exist in places. The common 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



185 



It was this sharing in the common land which chap, iv. 
marked off the freeman, or ceorl, from the unf ree The settie- 
man, or lset, the tiller of land which another owned. the n con- 
As the ceorl was the descendant of settlers who, querors - 
whether from their earlier arrival or from kinship T&eun- 
with the original settlers of the village, had been ad- 
mitted to a share in its land and its corporate life, so 
the laet was a descendant of later comers to whom 
such a share was denied, or in some cases perhaps 
of earlier dwellers from whom the land had been 
wrested by force of arms. In the modern sense of 
freedom, the laet was free enough. He had house 
and home of his own, his life and limb were as se- 
cure as the ceorl's — save as against his lord ; it is 
probable, from what we see in later laws, that as time 
went on he was recognized as a member of the na- 
tion, summoned to the folk-moot, allowed equal right 
at law, and called like the full freeman to the host- 
ing. But he was unfree as regards lord and land. 
He had neither part nor lot in the common land of 
the village. The ground which he tilled he held 
of some freeman of the tribe to whom he paid rent 
in labor or in kind. And this man was his lord. 
Whatever rights the unfree villager might gain in 
the general social life of his fellow-countrymen, he 



pasture or meadow was divided into portions, each of which changed 
hands annually, and each had cut on the turf a distinguishing mark 
— as an arrow, a triangle, or a circle. At the harvest feast a num- 
ber of apples, each marked in a corresponding fashion to one of the 
' daels,' or divisions, were thrown into a tub of water. Each farmer 
then dived for an apple, and the mark which it carried indicated 
the ' dael ' which was to be his for the coming year. The Dolemoors 
in Somersetshire were managed in a similar way, save that the 
change was for a longer period " (Murray's Yorkshire, p. 161). 



jg5 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. rv. had no rights as against his lord. He could leave 
The settle- neither land nor lord at his will. He was bound to 

SrSon- render due service to his lord in tillage or in fight. 

querors. g long, however, as these services were done, the 
land was his own. His lord could not take it from 
him ; and he was bound to give him aid and protec- 
tion in exchange for his services. 1 

The slave. Far different from the position of the last was that 
of the slave, though there is no ground for believing 
that the slave class was other than a small one. It 
was a class which sprang mainly from debt or crime. 
Famine drove men to " bend their heads in the evil 
days for meat ;" the debtor, unable to discharge his 
debt, flung on the ground his freeman's sword and 
spear, took up the laborer's mattock, and placed his 
head as a slave within a master's hands. The crim- 
inal whose kinsfolk would not make up his fine be- 
came a crime serf of the plaintiff or the king. 
Sometimes a father pressed by need sold children 
and wife into bondage. In any case, the slave be- 
came part of the livestock of his master's estate, to 
be willed away at death with horse or ox, whose ped- 
igree was kept as carefully as his own. His chil- 
dren were bondsmen like himself ; even a freeman's 
children by a slave mother inherited the mother's 
taint. " Mine is the calf that is born of my cow," ran 
an English proverb. It was not, indeed, slavery such 
as we have known in modern times, for stripes and 
bonds were rare : if the slave was slain, it was by an 
angry blow, not by the lash. But his master could 
slay him if he would ; it was but a chattel the less. 

1 For Iset, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 25, 52, J2>> an d note. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



I8 7 



moot. 



The slave had no place in the justice-court, no kins- chap. iv. 
men to claim vengeance or guilt-fine for his wrong. The settie- 
If a stranger slew him, his lord claimed the damages ; t he n con- 
if guilty of wrong-doing, " his skin paid for him " un- q uerors - 
der his master's lash. If he fled, he might be chased 
like a strayed beast, and when caught he might be 
flogged to death. If the wrong-doer were a woman, 
she might be burned. 1 

With the public life of the village, however, the Thetun - 
slave had nothing, the laet in early days little, to do. 
In its moot, the common meeting of its villagers for 
justice and government, a slave had no place or voice, 
while the laet was originally represented by the lord 
whose land he tilled. The life, the sovereignty, of 
the settlement was solely in the body of the freemen 
whose holdings lay round the moot-hill or the sacred 
tree where the community met from time to time to 
order its own industry 2 and to make its own laws. 
Here new settlers were admitted to the freedom of 



1 For the slave, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 89 ; Kemble, Saxons in 
England, i. 185, etc. 

2 There is no ground for believing that the " tun-moot " was a 
judicial court. Its work was the ordering of the village life and 
the village industry ; and traces of this still survive in our institu- 
tions. " The right of the markmen to determine whether a new 
settler should be admitted to the township exists in the form of 
admitting a tenant at the court baron and customary court of every 
manor ; the right of the markmen to determine the ' bye-laws,' the 
local arrangement for the common husbandry, or the fencing of the 
hay-fields, or the proportion of cattle to be turned into the common 
pasture, exists still in the manorial courts and in the meetings of 
the townships ; the very customs of 'relief and surrender, which are 
often regarded as distinctly feudal, are remnants of the polity of the 
time when every transfer of property required the witness of the 
community to whose membership the new tenant was thereby ad- 
mitted " (Stubbs, Const. Hist. i. 95, 96). 



jgg THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. iv. the township, and by-laws framed and headman and 
The settle- tithing-man chosen for its governance. Here plough- 
the n con- land and meadow-land were shared in due lot among 
querors. tf\e villagers, and field and homestead passed from 
man to man by the delivery of a turf cut from its 
soil. Here strife of farmer with farmer was settled 
according to the " customs " of the township as its 
elder men stated them, and four men were chosen 
to follow headman or ealdorman to hundred-court or 
war. It is with a reverence such as is stirred by the 
sight of the head-waters of some mighty river that 
one looks back to these village-moots of Friesland 
or Sleswick. It was here that England learned to 
be a " mother of parliaments." It was in these tiny 
knots of husbandmen that the men from whom Eng- 
lishmen were to spring learned the worth of public 
opinion, of public discussion, the worth of the agree- 
ment, the " common sense," the general conviction 
to which discussion leads, as of the laws which de- 
rive their force from being expressions of that gen- 
eral conviction. A humorist of our own day has 
laughed at parliaments as " talking-shops," and the 
laugh has been echoed by some who have taken hu- 
mor for argument. But talk is persuasion, and per- 
suasion is force, the one force which can sway free- 
men to deeds such as those which have made Eng- 
land what she is. The " talk " of the village moot, 
the strife and judgment of men giving freely their 
own rede and setting it as freely aside for what they 
learn to be the wiser rede of other men, is the 
groundwork of English history. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



189 



CHAPTER V. 

THE STRIFE OF THE CONQUERORS. 

577-617. 

Important as was the battle of Deorham in mark- English 

. . . . . , , , . , and Brit- 

mg the point 01 transition between the earlier age ot om. 
conquest and the age of settlement which followed 
it, it is of hardly less importance as marking a new 
point of departure in the political relations of the 
conquerors themselves. Nothing can be more re- 
markable than the change which from this moment 
passes over their relations to the conquered people. 
Till now, as we have seen, the war between English- 
men and Welshmen had been a war of extermina- 
tion. Eastward of the line which the English sword 
had drawn across the island, no trace was left of Ro- 
man or of British life ; and westward of it, in the 
half of Britain that still remained unconquered, there 
was no thought of submission to or intercourse with 
the conquerors. The force of the Roman past was 
seen in the attitude which the Britons preserved 
towards their English assailants. In our anxiety to 
know more of our fathers, we listen to the monoto- 
nous plaint of Gildas with a strange disappointment. 
Gildas must have witnessed much of the invasion ; J 
but we look in vain through his book for any ac- 

1 His work dates from about 560, but he had quitted Britain some 
thirty years before. 



I90 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. count of the life or settlement of Saxon or Engle or 
The strife Jute. He tells us nothing of their fortunes or of their 
°qu^rors n leaders. A new people was growing up in the con- 
57 ~ 7 quered half of Britain, but across the border of this 
— new people Gildas gives us but a glimpse — doubt- 
less he had but a glimpse himself — of forsaken walls, 
of shrines polluted with heathen impiety. His si- 
lence and ignorance mark the character which the 
struggle preserved up to the close of the sixth cen- 
tury. The Briton had been driven by the sword 
from much of British soil. But, beaten as he was, 
he yet remained unconquered. No British neck 
had as yet bowed in willing slavery before the Eng- 
lish invader; and the provincials still looked down 
on their assailants with the scorn with which Rome 
had looked down on them in the very height of its 
power. They still held the struggle to be one of 
civilization against barbarism. To the Britons the 
English invaders remained " barbarians," " wolves," 
" dogs," " whelps from the kennel of barbarism," 
" hateful to God and to man." ' Their victories were 
accepted as triumphs of the power of evil, as chas- 
tisements of a divine justice for national sin. But 
their ravage, terrible as it was, was held to be almost 
at an end ; in another century, so ran Welsh proph- 
ecies, their last hold on the land would be shaken 
off. 
Beino. Legend, if it distorts facts, preserves accurately 
enough the impressions of a vanished time ; and in 
the legend of St. Beino we catch a glimpse of the 

1 Gildas, Hist. 23 : " Ferocissimi illi nefandi nominis Saxones, Deo 
hominibusque invisi, quasi in caulas lupi . . . grex catulorum de cu- 
bili leasnse barbarise . . . canum catastam." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ! 9 ! 

chasm that parted the two races at this period. Beino chap. v. 
had settled with some monkish followers in a solitary The strife 
retreat in the west of our Herefordshire. " And on qU erors n ~ 
a certain day, as Beino was travelling near the river 577 ^i 7 
Severn, where was a ford, lo ! he heard a voice on — 
the other side of the river, inciting dogs to hunt a 
hare ; the voice being that of a Saxon, who spoke 
as loud as he could ' Cirgia ' (charge), which in that 
language incited the dogs. And when Beino heard 
the voice of the Saxon, he immediately returned, 
and, coming to his disciples, said to them, ' My sons, 
put on your clothes and your shoes, and let us leave 
this place, for the nation of this man has a strange 
language, and is abominable, and I heard his voice 
on the other side of the river inciting the dogs after 
a hare. They have invaded this place and it will be 
theirs, and they will keep it in their possession.' And 
then Beino said to one of his disciples, Bithylint was 
his name — ' My son,' said he, ' be obedient to me ; I 
wish that thou wilt remain here. My blessing shall 
be with thee. And the cross which I have made I 
will leave with thee.' And the blessing of Beino 
bound that disciple, and he remained there. And 
Beino and his disciples came as far as Meivon, and 
there he remained with Tysilio forty days and forty 
nights. And from thence he came to King Cynan, 
son of Brochwel, and he requested a place to pray 
for his soul, and that of his friends. And the king 
gave to him Gwydelwerum, in Merionethshire." * 

1 Lives of Cambro- British Saints, by Rev. W. J. Rees, p. 301. The 
Welsh text is given at p. 1 5. Like most of the Welsh hagiographies, 
Beino's Life, in its present form, is of the twelfth century ; but, like 
its fellows, it is clearly founded on old materials. 



of the Con 
querors. 

577-617. 

End of ex 



!q 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. But with the battle of Deorham this absolute sev- 
The strife erance between the one race and the other comes al- 
most suddenly to an end. In a few years we find 
the Welshmen of the west in alliance with, and even 
fighting by the side of, their assailants of the east. It 
termina- is possible that its British inhabitants had never been 
Brums, driven from the soil which Ceawlin won in the lower 
Severn valley ; it was, at any rate, but a short while 
after their settlement that the West -Saxon settlers 
in this district were leagued with the Welsh for the 
overthrow of Ceawlin. Such a league took a yet 
more marked form when Penda and the Englishmen 
of Mid-Britain marched side by side with Welshmen 
in their attack on Northumbria. Junctions such as 
these show that the older wars of extermination had 
come to an end, and that the hostility of the two 
races was henceforth to sink down into the common 
hostility of neighboring peoples. But we have more 
direct proof that the Britons were no longer driven 
from the soil by their assailants in the conquests 
which the Northumbrian King yEthelfrith was soon 
to win from the Britons of Strathclyde. " He wasted 
the race of the Britons more than any chieftain of the 
English had done," says Baeda, " for none drove out 
or subdued so many of the natives or won so much 
of their land for English settlement, or made so many 
tributary to Englishmen." ' The policy of accepting 
the submission and tribute of the Welsh, but of leav- 
ing them on the conquered soil, became, indeed, 
from this moment the invariable policy of the in- 
vaders ; and as the invasion pushed further and fur- 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 34. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. l ^ 

ther to the west, an ever-growing proportion of the char v. 
Britons remained mingled with the conquerors. We The strife 
see this strongly brought out in one of these west- qU erors7" 
ern districts. By a long series of victories, a series 577!^ 
spreading over the space of a hundred and thirty 
years, the West Saxons at last became masters of 
the country which now bears the name of Somerset, 
the land of the Somer-saetas. Each successive wave 
of invasion has left its mark in the local names of 
the district over which it passed; and the varying 
proportion of these to the Celtic or other non-Eng- 
lish names around them throws some light on the 
varying character of the conquest. We may take 
as a rough index the well-known English termina- 
tion " ton." North of Mendip, in the country which 
had been won in the early days of West-Saxon in- 
vasion, this bears to all other names the proportion 
of about a third. Between Mendip and the Parret, 
in the conquests of Centwine, it reaches only a fourth. 
Across the Parret, but east of the road from W T atch- 
et to Wellington, the proportion decreases to a fifth ; 
and westward of this it becomes rapidly rarer, and 
varies in different districts from an eighth to a 
tenth. In other words, the British population, which 
had withdrawn before the sword of Ceawlin, rested 
in quiet subjection beneath the sword of Ine. The 
change is yet more strongly marked by Ine's laws. 
In these the Briton is recognized as a subject of the 
State and as entitled to claim legal protection for 
life and limb. 

But the battle of Deorham marks more than a change m 

i r 1 11 relations 

change in the relation of the conquered to the con- f conquer- 
querors. It marks a change in the relations of the 

13 



jo 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. conquerors themselves. From this moment the strife 
The strife of Englishman and Briton, though far from having 
°querors n reached its close, sinks into comparative unimpor- 
577^617 tance ; and what plays the first part in English poli- 
— tics for the next two hundred years is the strife of 
Englishman with Englishman. However wearisome 
such a strife may seem, it was of vital import to the 
after-history of the country, for it was only by hard 
fighting that the relative weight of the conquering 
peoples could be determined, and a centre of su- 
premacy established round which the various tribes 
that had shared in the winning of Britain could 
gather into a nation. Till now no national idea had 
shown itself in the new England. All the kingdoms 
which had been built up by the invaders stood on a 
footing of equality. All had taken an independent 
share in the work of conquest. Although the one- 
ness of a common blood and a common speech was 
everywhere recognized, we find no traces of any 
common action or common rule. Even in the two 
groups of kingdoms, the Engle and the Saxon king- 
doms which occupied Britain south of the Humber, 
the relations of each member of the group to its 
fellow -members seem to have been merely local; 
it was only locally that East and West and South 
English were being grouped at this time round the 
Middle English of Leicester, or that the East and 
West and South Saxons had been grouped round the 
Middle Saxons about London. In neither instance 
do we find any real trace of a confederacy, or of the 
rule of one member of the group over the others ; 
while north of the Humber the feeling between the 
Engle of Yorkshire and the Engle who .had settled 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. I gs > 

towards the Firth of Forth was a feeling of hostility chav. v. 
rather than friendship. But with the conquests of The strife 
Ceawlin this age of isolation, of equality, of indepen- qU erors. 
dence, came to an end. The progress of the conquest 577 I^ 17 
had, in fact, drawn a sharp line between the kingdoms 
of the conquerors. The work of half of them was 
done. In the south of the island, not only Kent, but 
Sussex, Essex, and Middlesex were surrounded by 
English territory, and hindered by that single fact 
from all further growth. In Central Britain the 
same fate necessarily befell the East English, the 
South English, and the Middle English. The West 
Saxons, on the other hand, and the West English, 
or Mercians, still remained free to conquer and ex- 
pand on the south of the H umber, as the English- 
men of Deira and Bernicia remained free to the 
north of that river. It was plain, therefore, that 
from this moment the growth an d strength of these 
powers would throw their fellow-kingdoms into the 
background, and that with an ever-growing inequality 
of power must come a new arrangement of political 
forces. The greater kingdoms would in the end be 
drawn to subject and absorb the lesser ones, and to 
the war between Englishman and Briton would be 
added a struggle between Englishman and English- 
man. 

It was through this struggle, and the establish- 77 ^ Westm 
ment of a lordship on the part of the stronger and state. 
growing states over their weaker and stationary fel- 
lows in which it resulted, that the English kingdoms 
were to make their first step towards union in a sin- 
gle England ; and from the time we have reached 
the struggle became inevitable. Masters of the 



196 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. v. larger and richer portion of the land, the invaders 
The strife were no longer drawn irresistibly westward by the 

rf the Con 
querors. 

577-617. 



on "hope of plunder, while the severance of the British 
kingdoms lightened the pressure of a common dan- 
ger from without. Greed and terror alike ceased to 
hold the invaders together, and Saxon and Engle 
turned from the work of conquest to fight for lord- 
ship over the land they had won. At the moment 
of Ceawlin's victory, such a lordship seemed to fall 
necessarily to the lot of Wessex. No king could 
vie as a conqueror with the king who had fought 
and won at Barbury Hill, at Wimbledon, and at 
Deorham. 1 None of its fellow -kingdoms seemed 
likely to hold their own against a state that stretched 
from the Channel to the Ouse, and from the Chit- 
terns to the mouth of the Severn. Only one suc- 
cess more, in fact, was needed to raise such a power 
into supremacy over the whole English people. A 
march on the upper Severn valley and the winning 
of Chester would utterly crush the resistance of the 
Britons ; for it would cut off the Cumbrians from 
the central districts of our Wales, as Deorham had 
already cut off the Welsh of Somerset, Devon, and 
Cornwall, and thus break what had been Britain 
into three isolated districts which could oppose no 
common or national resistance to their assailants. 



1 At Barbury Hill, Ceawlin had shared the victory with Cynric 
(E. Chron. a. 556). The victory at Bedford had been won by his 
brother Cuthwulf. It is this commanding position of Ceawlin that 
Baeda marks in setting him in the list of those who exercised an 
" imperium " over other Englishmen — ^Ella of the South Saxons, 
Ceawlin, ^Ethelberht of Kent, Raedwald of East Anglia, and the 
Northumbrian kings Eadwine, Oswald, and Oswiu ( Baeda, Hist. 
Eccl. ii. 5). But see postea, p. 298, note. 



1 98 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. v. But the result of such a conquest would be almost 

The strife as decisive on the political aspect of the new Eng- 
"querors 11 land itself. With a border that stretched from the 

577-617. Fens round to the head-waters of the Trent, the 
— pressure of the West Saxons on Central Britain 
would have been irresistible. The scattered settlers 
who were dotted over Northamptonshire, the in- 
vaders who were hardly camped along the basin of 
the Trent, the peoples of the eastern coast from the 
H umber to the Thames, would have been powerless 
to resist Ceawlin's supremacy, while the strength of 
the Deirans and of the Bernicians was being drained 
at this crisis by a long and obstinate war which these 
tribes were waging against one another in the bor- 
der-lands of the Wear. Neither to the south nor to 
the north of the H umber was there any state save 
Kent that could have withstood the West Saxons ; 
and, alone, even Kent could not have held its own. 

Uriconi- We can hardly doubt that it was the sense of 
these issues that drew Ceawlin to push, in 583, only 
six years after his victory at Deorham, up the course 
of the Severn. Marching through the forest -belt 
that stretched from Arden across the north of our 
Worcestershire, a belt whose fragments preserve 
the name of the forest of Wyre, the king reached 
Uriconium, 1 a town whose name we recognize in its 

1 For a translation of Llywarch Hen's elegy on Kyndylan, a dis- 
cussion of its historical relation to this inroad, and an identification 
of its " Tren " with Uriconium, see Guest, " Conquest of Severn Val- 
ley," Archseol. Journal, vol. xix. pp. 199-215. For the ruins of Uri- 
conium, see Wright, Guide to Uriconium, 1859. On one wall were 
found two lines scrawled in the plaster, which would have been in- 
valuable for a knowledge of Roman Britain. Unluckily, they were 
destroyed ; but it is noteworthy that they were in Latin (ibid. p. 46). 



uni. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. jgg 

district of the " Wrekin," and whose ruins have been chap. v. 
recently brought to light. The town was strongly The strife 
placed at the base of the Wrekin, not far from the° que rors n 
bank of the Severn, and was of great extent. Its 57 ^ 17 
walls enclosed a space more than double that of Ro- — 
man London, while the remains of its forum, its thea- 
tre, and its amphitheatre, as well as the broad streets 
which contrast so strangely with the narrow alleys 
of other British towns, 1 show its wealth and impor- 
tance. But with its storm by the West Saxons the 
very existence of the city came to an end. Its ruins 
show that the place was plundered and burned, 
while the bones which lie scattered amons; them 
tell their tale of the flight and massacre of its in- 
habitants, of women and children hewn down in the 
streets, and wretched fugitives stifled in the hypo- 
causts whither they had fled with their little hoards 
for shelter. 2 A British poet, in verses still left to us, 
sings piteously the death-song of Uriconium, " the 
white town- in the valley," the town of white stones 
gleaming among the green woodlands. The torch 
of the foe had left it, when he sang, a heap of black- 
ened ruins, where the singer wandered through halls 
he had known in happier days — the halls of its chief 
Kyndylan, " without fire, without light, without song;" 
their stillness broken only by the eagle's scream — 
the eagle " who has swallowed fresh drink, heart's 
blood of Kyndylan the fair." 

But with the fall of Uriconium, the firing of Pen- Defeat of 
gwyrn, 3 in its loop of the upper Severn, and the 

1 Wright, Uriconium, p. 48. 

2 Wright, Uriconium, pp. 40, 41. 

3 Pengwyrn occupied the site of our Shrewsbury. 



200 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. wreck of " Bassa's churches," perhaps a group of 
The strife small chapels, such as we still find at Glendalough, 
"quwoM^" an d which may have left their name to the little vil- 
577^617 ^ a g e °f Baschurch, 1 the success of the West Saxons 
— reached its close. From this point the aim of their 
raid must have been Chester ; but as Ceawlin pushed 
from Uriconium up the Severn to the head-waters 
of the Weaver, he was met at a spot called Faddi- 
ley, 2 on what was possibly the border of the city ter- 
ritory, as it is still that of our Cheshire, by a British 
force which had gathered under Brocmael, a chief- 
tain whose dominion may have roughly answered to 
• the later Powys. 3 From the " wrath " with which 
Ceawlin fell back into his own country, as well as 
the events that followed, the battle must have ended 
in a terrible defeat of the Gewissas. The blow proved 
fatal to the power of Wessex. Not only was the 
upper Severn valley lost as quickly as it had been 
won, 4 but the loss was followed by a rising of those 
Gewissas — the Hwiccas, as they were called — who 

1 See Llywarch Hen's elegy, " Pengwyrn's palace : is it not in 
flames?" and for Bassa, w. 46-51 (Guest, Conquest of Severn Val- 
ley, pp. 204-209). Baschurch lies to the north of Shrewsbury. 

2 E. Chron. a. 584. For the identity of its " Fethan-Leag " with 
Faddiley, see Guest, Conquest of Severn Valley, pp. 196-199. It is 
some three miles west of Nantwich'. 

3 Guest, Conquest of Severn Valley, p. 215. 

4 I am afraid I differ here from Dr. Guest and Mr. Freeman. But 
the point seems clear when we compare the lower with the upper 
valley of the Severn. Both in later days became Mercian ground. 
But the country of the Hwiccas retains to this day its West-Saxon 
dialect, while north of the Forest of Wyre the tongue is Mercian. 
Had this upper district been a West-Saxon settlement conquered 
by Mercians, I see no reason why its dialect should have differed 
from that of the West-Saxon lands conquered by Mercia on the 
lower Severn. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 20I 

had settled in the newly conquered country along chap. v. 
the lower Severn, 1 and who now took for their king The strife 
Ceol or Ceolric, 2 the son of Cutha, a brother of^jjjjjjj 1 " 
Ceawlin, who had fallen in the rout at Faddiley. 3 577^617 
With the rising of the Hwiccas began a struggle „ —7 , 

1 it r Battle of 

for the throne between the lines of Cutha and Ceaw- Wanbor- 
lin, which broke the strength of Wessex for more 
than two hundred years. The first encounter, in- 
deed, between the two houses showed how thorough- 
ly the kingdom was rent in twain. The revolt in 
the Severn valley had thrown Ceawlin back on the 
older Wessex; and it is there that, when Ceolric 
marched to attack him in 591, we find the king en- 
camped at Wanborough, 4 on the brink of the Wilt- 
shire Downs, where their steep escarpment rears it- 
self above the vale of White Horse. The height was, 
no doubt, crowned with the mound or barrow from 
which its name is drawn — the barrow of Woden, 
the god from whom the kings of Wessex believed 
their race to spring: and its sacred character may 
have backed its advantages as a military position ; 
for Wanborough was the key of Ceawlin's shrunken 
realm. 5 So long as he held the post, the old king 

1 I gather this from the point at which Ceawlin takes post against 
the rebels, as well as from their junction with "Britons" against 
him. See postea. 

2 E. Chron. a. 590.^ Malmesbury (Gesta Regum, i. 17) identifies 
its " Ceol " with Ceolric. 

3 E. Chron. a. 584 : " There was Cutha slain." 

4 E. Chron. a. 591. Guest ("Welsh and English in Somerset," 
Archaeol. Journal, xvi. 106, 107) fixes this "Wodnes beorge " at 
Wanborough. Malmesbury (Gesta Regum, i. 17) attributes the ris- 
ing to the hatred felt towards Ceawlin (" quia enim in odium sui 
quasi classicum utrobique cecinerat "), but does not give its causes. 

6 Guest, "Welsh and English in Somerset," Archaeol. Journal, 
xvi. 107. 



202 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. could communicate by Roman roads with Winches- 
The strife ter and Old Sarum ; another road ran by Silchester 
^uevorT^° the regions south of the Thames which he had 
577^617 won a ^ Wimbledon ; while reinforcements from the 
— district of the Four Towns could reach him by the 
Icknield Way, which ran* along the edge of the 
downs on which he stood. It was this that made his 
overthrow a decisive one. After a terrible slaughter, 
the day went against Ceawlin ; 1 he was driven from 
his realm, and perished two years after, it may be 
in some effort to regain his throne. 2 The battle of 
Wanborough marks, as we have seen, a new stage 
in the relations of Welshmen and Englishmen. At 
Faddiley the Britons had reappeared on the scene 
of our history as a vigorous fighting power. At 
Wanborough, it was their junction with the Hwic- 
cas that struck down Ceawlin, for Britons marched 
side by side with the Hwiccas in the host of Ceolric. 3 
But the battle marks no less a new stage in the his- 
tory of the West Saxons. The House of Cutha, 
which this alliance had seated on the throne, 4 had at 
once to pay the price of a policy which had brought 
the Welshmen into Wessex. After a few years 
Ceolric was succeeded by his brother Ceolwulf ; 5 but 
the reign of Ceolwulf was one long fight with Eng- 

1 E. Chron. a. 591 : " There was great slaughter at Wanborough, 
and Ceawlin was driven out." 2 E. Chron. a. 593. 

3 Malmesbury (Gesta Regum, i. 17) : " Conspirantibus tam Anglis 
quam Brittonibus apud Wodnesdic cseso exercitu." 

4 It retained it till 685, when Ceawlin's line again recovered the 
kingdom under Csedwalla and Ine, and, after a fresh interruption, 
finally made it its own in Ecgberht. 

5 E. Chron. a. 597: "He fought and contended incessantly with 
Angel-cyn, or with Walas, or with Peohtas, or with Scottas." I 
cannot explain the appearance here of " Picts and Scots." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



203 



lishmen and Britons ; and it was while Wessex was 
thus battling for very life that the primacy among 
the conquerors was suddenly seized by a rival whom 
she had struck down some thirty years before. 

The effort of the Kentishmen to break out of 
their narrow bounds had been foiled by Ceawlin at 
Wimbledon ; and their boy-king had fallen back on 



CHAP. V. 

The Strife 
of the Con- 
querors. 

577-617. 

^Ethel- 

berht 
of Kent. 




«esfc 






R E ^ 



3*Et 




SOUTH BEI T AIN 



1 -VECT\$tEnffli$h-SJtEltO BYR1C , Modern -Chichester 
English Miles 



his petty realm only to watch the rise of his con- 
queror to a yet greater power over Britain. But 
^Ethelberht had never ceased to aim at a wider sway; 
and his ambition may have been quickened by a 
marriage that linked him with one of the greatest 
states of the Continent. From its geographical po- 
sition, as well as its long peace, it was natural that 



204 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. Kent should be the first of the English states to re- 
The strife new that intercourse with the body of western Chris- 
"(juerors!* ~ tendom which had been broken by the conquest of 
57-MJ17 tne Saxon Shore. In the reign of the Emperor Jus- 
— tinian — at some time, therefore, between 527 and 565 
(or shortly before ^Ethelberht's accession) — " men of 
the English " had been sent with his own envoys by 
one of the Frankish kings of Gaul to Constantino- 
ple ; and their presence at the Imperial Court was 
welcomed there as a proof that the island of Britain 
still owned the rule of the Caesars. 1 We can hardly 
doubt, from the date of this visit, that these English- 
men were men of the Cantwara, the one English folk 
which was fairly settled in Britain at so early a time ; 
while their presence in the train of these Frankish 
envoys points to some recognition by the Kentish- 
men of the supremacy of their Frankish neigh- 
bors, whose power must have seemed overwhelming 
at this time to the struggling invaders of Britain. 
Such a connection would, at any rate, explain the 
marriage of /Ethelberht with Bertha, a daughter of 
the Frankish king Charibert. 2 The marriage was 
in itself a significant one. If, as seems probable, it 
took place in the years that immediately followed 
the battle of Faddiley, 3 it may have marked the 

1 Procopius, De Bell. Goth. iv. 20. Freeman, Norman Conquest, 
i. 30. 

2 Greg. Turon. Hist. Eccl. iv. 26. 

3 ^thelberht's marriage lies, of course, between the battle of 
Wimbledon and Augustine's arrival (568-595). Bertha's father, 
Charibert, became king in 561 ; and as Bertha seems to have been 
born soon after her father's accession (Greg. Turon. iv. 21 ), the 
marriage, assuming her to be about twenty when it took place, lies 
at about 583, or a little later. It may have followed Fethanlea in 
584. Professor Stubbs (Diet. Christ. Biog. i. 316) thinks it was prob- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 205 

awakening of larger aims in the Kentish king as he chap. v. 
saw the great obstacle to his ambition crumble into The strife 
ruin. Nor was it less important in its results; for que r 0r s n " 
it not only linked the fortunes of the new England 577 7J 17 
with those of the German states which were grow- — 
ing up upon the wreck of Roman Gaul, 1 but was 
fated in the end to knit her again to the general 
fortunes of Western Christendom. 

The home to which ^Ethelberht brought his Canter- 
Frankish wife was the first Teutonic town which we 
know to have arisen on the soil of the new Eng- 
land. Its conquerors had hitherto followed the bent 
of their race in leaving the cities they had won to 
ruin and to solitude, and in settling in " tun " or 
" thorpe " in the country about them. But by /Ethel- 
berht's day the Kentish kings had fixed one of their 
homes just outside the northeastern wall of Duro- 
vernum ; and some of the Cantwara had drawn into 
a little " byryg," or borough, round the dwelling of 
their king. From this first Cantwara-byryg, or Can- 
terbury, they crept forward over the site of the ru- 
ined town. How utter a wreck Durovernum had 
become in the century since its fall, we see by com- 
paring the ground-plan of the Roman city with that 
of the city which thus sprang up on its site. Though 
the continued existence of its Roman walls forced 
the settlers to build their houses in lines that led, 
like those of the Roman burghers, from gate to gate, 

ably after the death of her mother, Ingoberg, in 589. Greg. Turon. 
Hist. Eccl. ix. 26. 

1 The connection with Frankish Gaul, however, cannot have been 
a very close one, for Gregory of Tours (Hist. Eccl. ix. 26) speaks 
of Bertha as married by " in Cantia regis cujusdam Alius," whose 
name he clearly did not know. 



20 5 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. yet the line of these thoroughfares was not adjusted 

The strife to that of the Roman streets, nor were the sites of 

"Vu^rors^the Roman houses taken for those of the later dwell- 

K ~TZ„ ino;s. The wreck of the Roman houses, indeed, is 

t)77— ul7. O 

— found buried so deep beneath the soil of the Eng- 
lish Canterbury that they must have sunk into ruins 
long before the Cantwara found a home in Duro- 
vernum. Even then it was very gradually that the 
new borough crept forward from the king's " tun " 
over the site of its predecessor ; and the dedications 
of its churches, marking as they do the date of the 
parishes in which they were raised, show that the 
whole area within the walls was not filled up till the 
days of Dunstan and Eadgar. 1 
sEthei- But even the stimulus of Bertha's marriage could 

bcvht^s sii- 

premacy. hardly have spurred yEthelberht to a renewal of his 
efforts, had not the sudden ruin of Wessex left the 
field open to his arms. British soil, indeed, there 
was no longer any that he could win ; but about him 
lay English neighbors who might be forced to own 
his supremacy. We know nothing of the marches 
or battles by which the Kentish king asserted his 
sway; but in the six years that followed the battle 
of Wanborough, yEthelberht raised Kent into one of 
the great powers of Britain. 2 Even in Wessex his 
power was owned as that of a neighbor whose safe- 
conduct was sufficient to protect men in passing 
through the very heart of Ceolwulf's realm. 3 But 



1 See Faussett's " Canterbury before Domesday," Archseol. Jour- 
nal, vol. xxxii. 

2 Baeda (Hist. Eccl. ii. 5) shows that his supremacy was established 
by 597. 

3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 2 : *' Adjutorio usus iEdilbercti regis con- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 207 

elsewhere he bowed his neighbors more directly chap. v. 
under his sway. Even the South Saxons were not The strife 
sheltered by their screen of woodland and fen from q U erors n " 
the grasp of the conqueror. 1 But across the Thames 57 ^ 17 
yEthelberht found an easier prey; and in 597 his — 
" empire," to use Basda's word, already spread along 
the eastern coast as far as to the banks of the H um- 
ber. 2 He was overlord of the East Saxons, whose 
king was wedded to his sister Ricula. 3 The East- 
Saxon kingdom, it must be remembered, comprised 
Hertfordshire and Middlesex as well as Essex itself; 
and London also passed under his sway, with the 
men who had so recently won it. 4 Northward of the 
Colne his supremacy extended not only over the 
East Anglians under their king Raedwald, but " over 
all the countries of the Southern Engle which are 
parted from the Engle of the North by the H umber, 
and by the border-lands in the neighborhood of the 
Humber." 5 His border-line thus ran along the 
Humber and across the great swamp of the Trent 
to Sherwood, across the valleys of the Derwent and 

vocavit (Augustinus) ad suum colloquium episcopos sive doctores 
proximae Brittonum provincise ... in confinio Hwicciorum et Occi- 
dentalium Saxonum." 

1 Malm. Gest. Pontif. (Script, post Bsed. p. 133). 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 25 : "Ad confinium usque Humbrse fluminis 
maximi, quo meridiani et septentrionales Anglorum populi dirimun- 
tur, fines imperii tetenderat." 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 3 : "In qua gente Saberct, nepos ^Edilbercti 
ex sorore Ricula, regnabat." Sledda was Saberct's father (Florence 
of Worcester, ed. Thorpe, Geneal. app. ad vol. i. p. 250). 

* Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 3 : " Fecit rex ^Edelberctus in civitate Lun- 
donia ecclesiam." 

5 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5 : " Cimctis australibus eorum (Anglorum) 
provinciis quae Humbrae fluvio et contiguis ei terminis sequestran- 
tur a borealibus imperavit." 



20 8 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. the Dove by Needwood to the water-parting which 
The strife formed the "march" of the Mercians; then, bending 
°querors n "round through Arden, it followed the western and 
57-M317 southern borders of Northamptonshire to the borders 
— of the Gyrwas beside Huntingdon, and struck by the 
Devil's Dyke and the great woodlands to the west- 
ern part of Hertfordshire, to the Thames, to Sussex, 
and the sea. 
English That this supremacy of ^Ethelberht was no mere 
S Roml accident, but the result of forces which were acting 
universally throughout the new England, is seen in 
the fact that the years in which it was built up saw 
the rise of a power hardly inferior to that of Kent 
on the north of the Humber. Under the rule of 
their king, yElla, the Engle of Deira are said not 
only to have made themselves masters of the country 
from the Humber to the Wear, but to have taken 
advantage of the discord in Bernicia to assert a su- 
premacy over their fellow-Engle to the north. 1 If 
this were so, we find the origin of a struggle between 
the two peoples in yElla's old-age which filled the 
foreign slave-markets with English slaves. 2 Noth- 
ing marks more strongly the chasm of thought and 
feeling that, in spite of oneness in tongue, blood, and 
religion, still parted the English tribes from one an- 
other than the cruel usages of their warfare. A war 

1 Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 155, 156. 

2 The date of Gregory's meeting with the English slaves at Rome 
is fixed between 585 and 588 by the fact that after his long stay at 
Constantinople he returned to Rome in 585 or 586 (Pelagius wrote 
to him at Constantinople in October, 584, while a letter of Pelagius 
to Elias in 586 is said to have been composed by Gregory at Rome). 
On the other hand, /Ella, whom the slaves owned as their king, died 
in 588. 




Stanford'* Oeographi £Ua»: 



14 



577-617. 



2IO THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. between two English peoples was carried on with 
The strife all the ruthlessness of a war between strangers. It 
° f quwors n " was purely at his captor's will that ransom saved the 
noble taken in battle from the doom of death. Slav- 
ery alone saved from death a captive of meaner rank. 
At a far later time than this, when the influence of 
Christianity had done much to soften English man- 
ners, the slaying of prisoners in cold blood, or their 
sale in foreign slave -markets, remained a common 
matter. 1 One of the most memorable stories in our 
history shows us a group of such slaves, taken in this 
war between the Bernicians and Deirans, as they 
stood in the market-place at Rome, it may be the 
great Forum of Trajan which still in its decay re- 
called the glories of the Imperial City. Their white 
bodies, their fair faces, their golden hair, were noted 
by a Roman deacon who passed by. 2 " From what 
country do these slaves come ?" Gregory asked the 
trader who had brought them. The slave-dealer an- 
swered, " They are English " (or, as the word ran in 
the Latin form it would bear at Rome, " they are An- 
gles "). The deacon's pity vented itself in poetic hu- 
mor. " Not Angles, but angels," he said, "with faces 
so angel-like." " From what country come they ?" 
" They come," said the merchant, " from Deira." 
" De ira," was the untranslatable word-play of the 

1 See the tale in Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 22. 

2 Such was his actual position in the Roman hierarchy, but Greg- 
ory was already the virtual director of the Papacy. He was, in fact, 
one of the seven " regionary deacons" of Rome, had been despatched 
by the popes Benedict the First and Pelagius the Second as their 
envoy for some years at the Imperial Court of Constantinople, and 
in a more personal capacity was abbot of the religious house he 
had founded on the Ccelian. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2II 

vivacious Roman ; " ay, plucked from God's ire and CHAP - v. 
called to Christ's mercy! And what is the name of The strife 
their king?" They told him "^Ella;" and Gregory queror s n 
again seized on this word as of good omen. " Alle- 577^17. 
luia shall be sung in ^Ella's land," he said, and passed 
on, musing how the " angel-faces " should be brought 
to sing it. 1 

While Gregory was thus playing with ^Ella's name creation 

1 ill- 1 1 -,i 1 • 1 1 • ™ of North- 

the old king passed away; and with his death, in 588, umbria. 
the strength of Deira seems suddenly to have broken 
down. 2 As the Bernician king, y^thelric, entered 
Deira in triumph, the children of ^Ella fled over its 
western border, while their land passed under the 
lordship of its conqueror. It was from the union of 
the two realms which his inroad and rule brought 
about that a new kingdom sprang which embraced 
them both — the kingdom of the Northumbrians. 
The supremacy of ^Ethelric was thus of a closer and 
more direct sort than that of yEthelberht; for while 
the Kentish king was content to rule over peoples 
who retained their own kingly stock and political 
unity, the King of Bernicia was striving to establish 
a direct rule over Deiran as well as Bernician, and to 
blend the political life of both peoples into a single 
realm. Different, however, as the character of the 
two lordships might be, they were parts of the same 
movement towards a larger unity; and with their 
rise the aspect of the conquered Britain was sudden- 
ly changed. Instead of a chaos of isolated peoples, 
its conquerors were gathered into three great groups, 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 1. 

2 E. Chron. a. 588. For the chronology of these events, see Hus- 
sey's edition of Baeda, Hist. Eccl. p. 99, note. 



2I2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. whose existence remained the key to the history of 
The strife the country during the next two hundred years. The 



of the Con 

its final limits from the Forth to the Humber. The 



... kingdom of the north had reached what remained 



577-617. 

— southern kingdom of the West Saxons stretched 
from the line of Watling Street to the coast of the 
Channel. And between these was already roughly 
sketched out the great kingdom of Mid - Britain, 
which, however its limits might vary in this quarter 
or that, retained a substantial identity both of char- 
acter and of area from the days of yEthelberht to the 
final fall of the Mercian kings. 
Augustine. When yEthelfrith, on the death of yEthelric, be- 
came king of Northumbria, in 593, this threefold di- 
vision of Britain must have been fairly established ; 
and of its three powers that of /Ethelberht was the 
widest and the most important. The fame of it, in- 
deed, crossed the seas, and woke to fresh life the mis- 
sion projects which had never ceased to stir in the 
mind of Gregory from the day when he pitied the 
English slaves in the market-place of Rome. Only 
three or four years after his converse with them in 
the Forum, Gregory became bishop of the Imperial 
City, 1 and thus found himself in a position to carry 
out his dream of winning back Britain to the faith. 
The marriage of Bertha with the Kentish king, and 
the rule which ^Ethelberht had since established 
over a large part of the island, afforded him the open- 
ing he sought ; and, after cautious negotiation with 
the Frankish rulers of Gaul, 2 who promised to guard 
his missionaries on their way, and to provide them 

1 In 590. 2 Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, iii. 10. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2l ^ 

with interpreters, Gregory sent a Roman abbot, chap. v. 
Augustine, at the head of a band of monks, to preach The strife 
the Gospel to the English people. The missionaries of q ^ r0 rs n " 
landed in 597 on the spot where Hengest had landed 577 ^ 17 
more than a century before in the isle of Thanet ; — 
and the interpreters whom they had chosen among 
the Franks were at once sent to the king with news 
of their arrival, as well as with promises of things 
strange to his ears — of joys without end and a king- 
dom forever in heaven. 

/Ethelberht cannot have been taken by surprise. Hisarn- 
He had married Bertha on the condition that she Kent. 
should remain a Christian ; her chaplain, Bishop 
Liudhard, formed a part of the Kentish Court ; and 
a ruined church now known as that of St. Martin 
outside the new Canterbury had been given him for 
his worship. Negotiations with Bertha and with 
the king himself had probably preceded the landing 
of Augustine ; and after a few days' delay ^Ethel- 
berht crossed into Thanet to confer with the new- 
comers. They found him sitting in the open air on 
the chalk down above Minster, 1 where the eye now- 
adays catches, miles away over the marshes, the dim 
tower of Canterbury; and the king listened patiently 
to the sermon of Augustine as the interpreters whom 
the abbot had brought with him rendered it in the 
English tongue. " Your words are fair," he answered, 
at last, with English good-sense ; " but they are new, 
and of doubtful meaning." For himself, he said, he 
refused to forsake the gods of his fathers ; but, with 
the usual religious tolerance of the German race, he 

: For fear of magic (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 25). 



21 a THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. promised shelter and protection to the strangers 
The strife within his own king's tun. The band of monks en- 
°<iuerors n " tered Canterbury bearing before them a silver cross 
577^617 w ith a picture of Christ, and singing in concert the 
— strains of the litany of their Church. " Turn from 
' this city, O Lord," they sang, " thine anger and 
wrath ; and turn it from thy holy house, for we have 
sinned." And then, in strange contrast, came the 
jubilant cry of the older Hebrew worship — the cry 
which Gregory had wrested in prophetic earnestness 
from the name of the Yorkshire king in the Roman 
market-place, " Alleluia." '" 
its results. It was thus that the spot which witnessed the 
landing of Hengest became yet better known as the 
landing-place of Augustine. But the second land- 
ino- at Ebbsfleet was in no small measure a reversal 
and undoing of the first. " Strangers from Rome "* 
was the title with which the missionaries first fronted 
the English king. The march of the monks, as they 
chanted their solemn litany, was in one sense a re- 
turn of the Roman legions who had withdrawn at the 
trumpet-call of Alaric. It was to the tongue and the 
thought, not of Gregory only, but of the men whom 
his own Jutish fathers had slaughtered and driven 
over-sea that yEthelberht listened in the preaching 
of Augustine. Canterbury, the earliest city-centre 
of the new England, 3 became the centre of Latin in- 
fluence. The Roman tongue became again one of 



1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 25. 

2 " Mittens ad ^Edelberctum (Augustinus) mandavit se venisse de 
Roma " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 25). 

3 " Dedit eis mansionem in civitate Doruvernensi, quse imperii sui 
totius erat metropolis " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 25). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



215 



the tongues of Britain — the language of its worship, chap.-: v. 
its correspondence, its literature. But more than The strife 
the tongue of Rome returned with Augustine. Prac- qU erors. 
tically his landing renewed that union with the West- 577^7. 
ern world which the landing of Hengest had all but 
destroyed. The new England was admitted into the 
older commonwealth of nations. The civilization, 
arts, letters, which had fled before the sword of the 
English conquerors, returned with the Christian 
faith. The fabric of the Roman law, indeed, never 
took root in England; but it is impossible not to rec- 
ognize the influence of the Roman missionaries in 
the fact that codes of the customary English law be- 
gan to be put into writing soon after their arrival. 1 
Of yet greater import was the weight which the new 
faith was to exercise on the drift of the English 
towards national unity. It was impossible for Eng- 
land to become Christian without seeing itself or- 
ganized and knit together into a single life by its 
Christian organization, without seeing a great na- 
tional fabric of religious order rise up in the face of 
its civil disorder. 

As vet, however, these issues of the new faith Gregory* 

J . . . plans. 

were still distant. For some years, indeed, after the 
landing of the missionaries on the shores of Thanet, 
there was little to promise any extension of Chris- 
tianity beyond the limits of Kent. After a short- 
time, indeed, ^Ethelberht listened to the preaching 



1 ^Ethelberht's laws are the first written code we possess. " Qui 
inter caetera bona, quae genti suae consulendo conferebat, etiam de- 
creta illi judiciorum, juxta exempla Romanorum, cum consilio sapi- 
entium constituit ; quae conscripta Anglorum sermone hactenus ha- 
bentur et observantur ab ea " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5). 



2I 6 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap, v. of the missionaries, 1 and thousands of Kentish men 
The strife crowded to baptism in the train of their chief. 2 Au- 
°querors n gustine, who had as yet used Bertha's Church of St. 
577-617. Martin for his worship, 3 now received from the king 
— the gift of another ruined church beside the city 
as the seat of his bishopric, and founded there the 
" Christ Church," which still remains the metropoli- 
tan church of the English communion ; while to the 
eastward of Canterbury rose an abbey of St. Peter 
and St. Paul, the patron saints of his own Rome, in 
which Augustine and his successors sat as abbots, 
and where the Kentish kings found from that time 
a burial-place. But if the conversion of Kent satis- 
fied the zeal of Augustine, it was far from satisfying 
the larger aims of Pope Gregory. Four years after 
the reception of his missionaries, it seemed to the 
Roman bishop that the time had come for widening 
the little church in Kent into a Church of Britain; 
and in 60 1 fresh envoys from Rome brought with 
them a plan for the ecclesiastical organization of the 
whole island. 4 It was characteristic of the conserv- 
ative temper of the Roman chancery, as well as a 
proof of the utter ignorance of the country which 
prevailed across the Channel, that the plan was 
drafted on the model of Britain as it had existed un- 
der the Romans, and took no count of the changes 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. i. 26. His conversion seems to have been in 
the year of Augustine's landing, 597 ; cf. Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5. 
, 2 Gregory, writing in 598, rejoices that at the past Christmas 
"plus quam decern millia Angli ab eodem nunciati sunt fratre 
(Augustino) et coepiscopo nostro baptizari " (Stubbs and Haddan, 
Councils, iii. 12). 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. i. 26. 

* See the letter, as dated, in Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 29. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



217 



which had been wrought by its conquest. In Ro- char v. 
man Britain, London and York had been the lead- The strife 
ing cities, and it was London and York that Greg-° quer0 rs. " 
ory took as the new ecclesiastical centres of the isl- 57 ^i 7- 
and. Augustine was to be bishop of London, with — 
twelve suffragans in the south. He was to send an- 
other bishop to York, who, as soon as Northern Brit- 
ain became Christian, was in turn to ordain twelve 
suffragans for himself, and to be of equal rank with 
Augustine's successors. Time was to modify this 
programme ; but its very existence was significant. 
It w r as plain that if Britain became Christian, its 
conversion to the new faith would bring with it a 
new organization of the whole country, and that the 
form which its religious life must assume would lead 
to a reconstruction of the forms which its civil life 
had hitherto taken. 

But, urgent as was Gregory's appeal, ^Ethelberht TheBrit- 
was slow to use his overlordship as a means of 
forcing the peoples beneath his sway to bow to the 
new faith which he and his people had embraced. 
Even Augustine seems for the moment to have pre- 
ferred the easier enterprise — as it seemed — of placing 
the Kentish Church in connection with the Chris- 
tianity which, as he had by this time learned, existed 
in the west of Britain. His journey, " with the aid 
of King ^Ethelberht," across the territory of the 
West Saxons to the border-line of the Hwiccas, 1 and 



1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 2. The place of conference was " in con- 
finio Hwicciorum et Occidentalium Saxonum." It is generally put 
at Aust Passage on the Severn ; but if these words, as I believe, 
are rightly rendered, " on the border between the Hwiccas and West 
Saxons," this is out of the question ; and we must look rather to 



2i8 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. the conference with the Welsh clergy which followed, 
The strife bring us for the first time into personal contact with 
querors. what remained of the British race. As yet our 
577^617. g nm P ses of the Britons since the landing of Hen- 
— gest have been scant and dim ; and we learn to prize 
even the meagre jottings in which the chronicle of 
the conquerors tells us of their advance over Brit- 
ain, as we turn to the thick darkness which during 
this period overspreads the story of the British de- 
fence. How stubborn that defence had been, the 
very length of the struggle has told us. To tear the 
Saxon Shore from the grasp of its defenders was a 
work of fifty years ; and even when the Saxon Shore 
was lost, when its cities had become heaps of charred 
ruins, when the fortresses which had so long held 
the pirates at bay from the Wash to the Solent were 
but squares of broken and desolate walls, the coun- 
try at large retained its cohesion, and faced its foes 
as stubbornly as before. Driven as they were from 
their first line of defence, the Britons fell back on an 
inner line, whose natural features presented yet more 
formidable obstacles to their assailants, and the isl- 
and, as a whole, remained untouched by the English 
sword. The next seventy years saw even the bulk 
of Britain reft from them. But throughout the long 
fight the British resistance remained as stubborn as 
ever. The conquest of Yorkshire, of the southern 
downs, and of the valley of the Thames, though they 

some such place as the later Malmesbury, near this border, yet still 
British ground. It is clear that the Hwiccas and West Saxons 
were still, as in Ceawlin's day, politically distinct, and we have seen 
that at that time Welsh and Hwiccas were allied. If this alliance 
went on, the presence of Welsh cler,gy in this border-line is easily 
accounted for. 






THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 \Q 

shook the province more roughly, failed to break it chap. v. 
up; for in the forest of Wyre and of Arden the The strife 
Britons held out doggedly against the Saxons, while ° qU erors n 
the fastnesses of Charnwood and Sherwood held at 57 ^" 17 
bay the invaders of the Trent valley. And now that 
even Mid-Britain was gone, and that the provincials 
of the southwest had been cut off from the general 
body of their race, the Britons still faced the West 
Saxons along the lower Severn, still held the Mer- 
cians at bay along the head -waters of the Trent, 
while along the dark range of moors from Elmet to 
Selkirk they barred the advance of the Deirans and 
Bernicians of the north. 

But, loner before this point in the strife was reached, ™ r *- 

° ... orgamza- 

the contest had told fatally on their political and so- Hon. 
cial condition. In the unconquered part of Britain, 
indeed, the war had produced results almost as great 
as in the conquered. Severed from connection with 
the Empire or with the rest of Europe, broken by 
defeats, wasted by incessant forays, what remained 
of the province lost, little by little, even the sem- 
blance of unity. The disorganization which had be- 
gun in the strife of the native and Romanized par- 
ties cannot but have widened as time went on. In 
the more remote and uncivilized parts of the prov- 
ince west of the Yorkshire moorlands and the Sev- 
ern, in what was afterwards called Cumbria, or the 
district from the Clyde to the Dee — in the country 
which now answers to Wales, Devon, and Cornwall — 
the native party definitely got the upperhand, 1 while 
in Mid-Britain the Romanized cities may have re- 

1 This is shown by the list of princes in the Epistola of Gildas, 
cc. 1-8. 



2 2o THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. tained their supremacy. But everywhere there was 
The strife the same fatal tendency to faction and severance. 
°queror° n "Save at moments of utter peril, no one chieftain 
57-M517 UR ited the native tribes under his sway, no one city 
— or league of cities gathered the towns around it. A 
crowd of petty princes jostled and battled over the 
surface of the west ; while each town isolated itself 
within its own district of subject country, and only 
joined its immediate neighbors for defence on the 
approach of the Englishmen. 
Augustine I n this political chaos, the old Roman civilization 
Britons, died slowly away. History and tradition alike rep- 
resent the chiefs of the west as having sunk into 
utter barbarians. In the district which they ruled, 
order and law had well-nigh disappeared in an out- 
break of greed, of bloodshed, and of lust, against 
which a Christianity that was fast sinking into mere 
superstition, and that seems to have been threatened 
for a while by apostasy, battled in vain. A chaos, at 
once political and religious, such as this gave little 
chance of welcome to a stranger, Christian though 
he were, who suddenly came from the midst of the 
conquerors, and, under the protection of an English 
king, to claim communion with the Welsh, and to 
call on them to unite in preaching the Gospel to 
their English foes. Augustine found, indeed, more 
obstacles than mere national hate. So little did the 
Roman missionaries know of the country to which 
they had been sent 1 that it was as a surprise- that 

1 Augustine's successor, Laurentius, owned that he and his fellow- 
missionaries came to Britain without any knowledge of the island. 
" Dum nos sedes apostolica ... in his occiduis partibus ad prsedi- 
candum gentibus paganis dirigeret, atque in hanc insulam, quae 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 2I 



they found themselves confronted by Christians char v. 
whose usages were in some ways not their own — The strife 
who, above all, celebrated Easter at a different sea- qU erors. " 
son 1 — and who, in their horror at these differences, 577^7. 
refused not only to eat with the Roman priests, but 
even to take their meals in the same house with 
them. 2 A miracle, which Augustine believed him- 
self to have wrought, failed to convince the Welsh 
of their errors in these matters; and when seven of 
their bishops, with monks and scholars from the great 
abbey at Bangor by the Dee, assembled at the place 
of conference — a place which still in Baeda's day pre- 
served its name of " Augustine's Oak " — they were in 
no humor for hearkening to his claims on their obe- 
dience as archbishop. The story ran that they con- 
sulted a solitary as to their course. " Let the stranger 
arrive first," replied the hermit ; " if then he rise at 
your approach, hear him submissively as one meek 
and lowly, and who has taken on him the yoke of 
Christ. But if he rise not at your coming, and de- 
spise you, let him also be despised of you." Augus- 
tine failed to rise ; and the conference broke off with 
threats from the Roman missionaries that if the Brit- 
ons would not join in peace with their brethren, they 
should be warred upon by their enemies. 3 

The conference at Augustine's Oak is memorable &«>«>£ °f 

°_ the Brit- 

as the opening of a conflict between the two great ons. 

Britannia nuncupatur, contigit introisse antequam cognosceremus ; 
credentes quod juxta morem universalis ecclesiae ingrederentur, in 
magna reverentia sanctitatis tam Brittones quam Scottos venerati 
sumus " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 4). 

1 We shall have to deal later on with these differences. 

2 See Dagan's refusal, Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 4. 

3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 2. 



222 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

char v. branches of the Western Church, the Celtic and the 
The strife Roman, which was to be fought out in many lands, 

of the Con- . ' . . . , & . . \ 

querors. but nowhere with more violence than in the new 
577^617. England. But to the Britons who took part in it, 
it had probably little religious significance. Their 
horror at the variance of usages, their resentment at 
the claims on their obedience, only gave an edge to 
their indignation at being called on to join in a work 
of conversion which of itself recognized the English 
as permanent masters of the soil they had won. At 
no moment, indeed, could they have been less inclined 
to such a recognition ; for the time at which Augus- 
tine appeared before them was a time of national 
revival. To Gildas, as to every man of his race, the 
success of the invader had seemed due to the polit- 
ical disorganization among the British themselves, 
to the moral disorganization which accompanied it, 
and to the absence of any common and national re- 
sistance which followed from this disorganization. 
But the very triumphs of the English had done 
something to restore political unity to the chaos 
which called itself Britain. What were now left un- 
conquered were its purely Celtic portions — the dis- 
tricts along its western coast, where the wild coun- 
try and the scarcity of towns had given the Roman 
tradition but little hold, and where, even under the 
Roman rule, the native chieftains had probably been 
suffered to maintain much of their older sovereignty 
over their clans. In the break-up of national life 
during the years that had passed since the with- 
drawal of the Imperial administration, such chiefs 
had become independent lords of distinct provinces ; 
and their feuds and lawnessness broke the strength 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 2X 

of the island. In the midst of the sixth century, chap. v. 
Gildas paints for us a terrible picture of the savage The strife 
chieftains who parted Damnonia and our Wales be-° qU eror° n " 
tween them. 1 But even then the growing pressure 57 ^" 17 
of the invaders was making this mere chaos of jarring — 
princes impossible. The pettier British states were 
being forced to group themselves before the stran- 
ger. In the peninsula of the southwest, Constan- 
tine, a descendant, it may be, of Ambrosius Aureli- 
anus, was owned as supreme. West of the Severn, 
Maelgwn, a prince of what we now know as North 
Wales, towered above his brother rulers. The petty 
states from the Derwent to Dumbarton were fused 
together in a kingdom of Strath -Clyde. The con- 
solidation gave a new vigor to the British resist- 
ance ; and the rout of Ceawlin at Faddiley was but 
the first proof of the change. Not only were the 
Welsh strong enough to drive back the West Sax- 
ons from the upper valley of the Severn, and for 
twenty years after to hold its eastern passes against 
the advance guard of the Engle who were pressing 
up the Trent, but they were strong enough to be- 
come aggressors in their turn, to penetrate into the 
heart of the country from which they had been 
driven half a century before, and to humble the 
pride of Wessex on the battle-ground of Wanbor- 
ough. 

These triumphs in the south were but a few years Britons 
old when Augustine came to call them to reconcil- a> 
iation with their foes. And at that very moment 
triumphs as great seemed impending in the north. 

1 Epistola, cc. 1-8. 



224 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. From the moment of his accession to the Northum- 
The strife brian throne in 593, ^Ethelfrith had taken up the 
°querors n work of conquest with a ruthless vigor. His sword 
577^617 became the terror of the Welsh along his whole 
— western border, from the Yorkshire moorlands to the 
dykes and forests which sheltered the Britons of 
Clydesdale. 1 But fierce as v^Ethelfrith's attack w 7 as, 
it was only ten years after his accession that his ad- 
vance in this quarter became so threatening as to 
unite in one vast confederacy the whole force of the 
countries along his border. The Welsh states of the 
north had united in a kingdom of Strath -Clyde; 2 
and the men of Strath-Clyde found at this juncture 
allies in a neighbor race. At the close of the Ro- 
man rule over Britain, settlers from the north of 
Ireland (w r hose inhabitants then bore the name of 
Scots) crossed the strait of sea between Ulster and 
Cantyre, and founded a Scot or Irish kingdom, the 
kingdom of Dalriada, around the shores of Loch 
Linnhe. This little kingdom had rested till now 
in obscurity ; but, freeing itself gradually from the 
claims of overlordship pat forward by the sover- 
eigns of Ireland, and holding its own against the 
Picts, who surrounded it on the north and the east, 
it started, towards the close of the sixth century, 
into a new and vigorous life. It is possible that an 
impulse was given to it by an Irish exile, Colum or 
Columba, who landed in 563 in the little isle of Hii 
off the Pictish coast, and founded there a religious 
house which was destined to be the Christian centre 
of Northern Britain. The isle lay within the do- 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. i. 34. 

2 Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 159. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 225 

minions of the Picts, but the sympathies of Columba char v. 
naturally drew him to his Irish kinsmen round Loch The strife 

1 c r , , of the Con- 

Linnhe ; and after ten years of a prosperous rule at que rors. 
Hii, his legend tells us that he was bidden by an 577 IjT 17 
angel to consecrate Aedhan, the son of Gafran, as 
King of Dalriada. 1 

The consecration of Aedhan in 574 set him high D *g£- 
among his neighbor chieftains ; and his success in 
driving the Bernicians from the district south of the 
head of the Firth of Forth, 2 which was long a de- 
batable land between the various races that sur- 
rounded it, set him in the forefront of the struggle 
against their kings. The series of fights which went 
on in that quarter for the twenty years between 580 
and 600 were the prelude to the more formidable 
attack of 603. In spite of his seventy years, 3 Aedhan 
stood first in the league which formed itself in that 
year against Northumbria ; and it was under his 
command that the hosts of Scots and Britons which 
had gathered from the whole district between the 
Lune and the lakes of Argyle marched upon Liddes- 
dale. The point at which they struck was the key 
of ^Ethelfrith's kingdom; for from the vale of the 
Liddel one pass leads into the valley of the Teviot 
and the Tweed, and another into that of the Tyne. 4 
But this important position was guarded by the 
rampart of the Cattrail, which formed the boundary 
between Northumbria and Strath-Clyde; and here, 

1 Adamnan, Life of Columba, ed. Reeves, p. 198 and note. 

2 Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 160. 

3 Tighernach places his birth in 533 (Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 160, 
note). 

* Skene, Celtic Scotland, i. 162, 

15 



2 2 g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, v. at Dsegsa's Stone, whose name we still catch in the 
The strife village of Dawston, ^thelfrith awaited his foe. The 
°querors n fight was a long and obstinate one ; Theodbald, a 
577^617. brother of yEthelfrith, was slain, and the whole force 
— he led cut to pieces. But the victory of the North- 
umbrians was only the more complete. The field 
was heaped with British dead, while of Aedhan's 
whole army only a few warriors succeeded in escap- 
ing with their king. 1 The blow dissolved the con- 
federacy which had threatened Northumbria. The 
Scot power, indeed, was utterly broken ; " from that 
day to this," Basda cries, in accents of unwonted tri- 
umph, more than a hundred years later, " no Scot 
king has dared to come into Britain to battle with 
the English folk." And while the Scots withdrew 
to their far-off fastnesses, the Welsh themselves lay 
at the conqueror's mercy. No effort, indeed, was 
made to seize their land for English settlement ; 2 
but we cannot doubt that the submission and tribute 
which we find Strath-Clyde owing to later kings of 
Northumbria were the result of yEthelfrith's victory 
at Daegsa's Stone. 
Conversion While Northumbria was thus widening its lord- 

of East . ° . . 

Saxons, ship in the north, /Ethelberht was at last entering 
on the great experiment of Christianizing his domin- 
ion in Mid-Britain, which Gregory and Augustine 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. i. 34. 

8 This comes vividly out in the sites of the royal " vills." " In 
Bseda's day," says Mr. Hodgson Hinde (Transac. Hist. Soc. of Lane, 
and Cheshire, viii. 11), "among the numerous villas maintained for 
the migratory residence of the royal household, not one occurs be- 
yond the chain of hills which separated the eastern district of the 
Northumbrian kingdom from the west. The reason is obvious, 
that even then no attempt was made to colonize the latter." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 22 y 

had urged upon him. His delay showed his sense chap. v. 
of its risk ; ' for it was three years after Gregory's The strife 
appeal, and seven years after the conversion of his ° q uwors n 
own kingdom, before yEthelberht ventured on push- 57 ^ 17 
ing the new faith across its borders. In 604, Augus- — 
tine set Justus as bishop, in the " Rochester" which 
had risen on the ruins of Durobrevis, 2 over all the 
Kentish kingdom west of the Medway. The diocese 
may mark a dependent realm of West Kent, whose 
relation to the common Kentish king would be re- 
flected in the subordination of this see to the moth- 
er see at Canterbury ; as the memory of the house 
of St. Andrew on the Coelian, from which the first 
English missionary had come, was preserved in the 
dedication to St. Andrew of the church which 
y^Ethelberht founded and endowed at Rochester. 
But his next step was a more important one. Of 
all his dependent kingdoms, Essex was most closely 
linked to the Kentish king. His sister Ricula had 
been wedded to the East-Saxon king, Sledda ; and 
their son, ^Ethelberht's nephew, Saeberct, was now 
ruling as an under-king over that people. 3 The little 
kingdom had been raised into consequence by its 
conquest of London in v^thelberht's boyhood ; for if 
the city had been for a while laid waste, the natural 
advantages of its position soon began to draw com- 

1 Gregory's letter is dated 601 ; ^thelberht's first effort to carry- 
it out was in 604. 

2 " Justum vero in ipsa Cantia Augustinus episcopum ordinavit in 
civitate Durobrevi, quam gens Anglorum a primario quondam il- 
lius, qui dicebatur Hrof, Hrofascsestre agnominat" (Bseda, Hist. 
Eccl. ii. 3). 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 3 : " Regnabat, quamvis sub potestate posi- 
tus vEdelbercti." 



2 2 8 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. merce and inhabitants once more to its site ; and in 
The strife the early years of the seventh century it was already 
°querors n ~ a dwelling -place of Englishmen. 1 In 604, Mellitus 
577^617. was sent as bi sno P to preach to the East Saxons; 2 
— and so complete seemed the success of his preach- 
ing in the conversion of Sasberct and his folk that 
v^Ethelberht began the building of a church of St. 
Paul as the bishop's stool of the new diocese in Lon- 
don itself. 3 His act — for there is no mention even 
of Saeberct's co-operation — marks how direct was his 
rule over the East-Saxon realm. But the site of the 
new church is hardly less significant. Though set- 
tlers were again repeopling London, the western ex- 
tremity of the Roman city can still have been but 
a waste in 604 ; for not only could the new church 
be placed there, but its precincts embraced, even to 
the Middle Ages, a large district around it, which 
stretched almost from the river to Newgate, and 
from near the wall as far inland as Cheapside. 
Radwaid The conversion of the East Saxons, and the suc- 
AngUa. cess of the first step in that general attack on Eng- 
lish heathendom which he had so vigorously urged 
on y^Ethelberht, must have been among the last 

1 " Orientalium Saxonum . . . quorum metropolis Lundonia civi- 
tas est, super ripam praefati fluminis posita, ei ipsa multorum em- 
porium populorum terra marique venientium." From the "est" 
and " metropolis," I take the latter words of Bseda (Hist. Eccl. ii. 
3) to refer, not to iEthelberht's day, but to his own in the eighth 
century, when the city was the " mother city " of the East-Saxon 
diocese. 

3 Baeda (Hist. Eccl. ii. 3) says that in 604 Mellitus was sent " ad 
prsedicandum " in Essex, and that, when the province at his preach- 
ing received the word, ^Ethelberht built the Church of St. Paul in 
London. The building was thus after 604, but probably soon after. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 3. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 2Q 

news which reached Gregory the Great ere he died, chap. v. 
in 606. His death was soon followed by that of The strife 
Augustine himself; whose body was laid beside the ° qU erors n " 
walls of his Church of St. Peter and St. Paul, which 57 ^ 17 
was now rising to completion. 1 But the death of — 
Gregory was only the prelude to a fresh step for- 
ward in the realization of his plans. Raedwald, the 
King of the East Anglians, was summoned to /Ethel- 
berht's court; and the pressure of his overlord suf- 
ficed to induce him to receive baptism as a Chris- 
tian. 2 But on his return home he found no will 
among the East Anglians to accept the new faith ; 
and their reluctance was backed by the opposition of 
his wife. 3 Raedwald strove to satisfy the conflicting 
will of his overlord and his own people by a charac- 
teristic compromise. He retained the older gods, 
but he placed the new Christ among them, and set 
a Christian altar in the temples beside the altar of 
the deities of his race. 4 

That such a compromise would content ^Ethel- 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 3. 

2 Bseda (Hist. Eccl. ii. 15) gives no date for Rsedwald's baptism, 
his subsequent apostasy, or his after-rise to independence. But the 
first must have been after the conversion of Essex in 604, and the 
last was some while before yEthelberht's death, in 616 (Bseda, Hist. 
Eccl. ii. 5). (See postea, p. 231, note 2.) The baptism was " in Can- 
tia" (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15); the apostasy, "rediens domum." 

3 " Rediens domum, ab uxore sua et quibusdam perversis doctori- 
bus seductus est " (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15). 

* " Ita ut, in morem antiquorum Samaritanorum, et Christo ser- 
vire videretur et diis quibus antea serviebat ; atque in eodem fano 
et altare haberet ad sacrificium Christi, et arulam ad victimas dse- 
moniorum" (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15). What is odder is that this 
temple with its two altars lasted almost to Bseda's day. " Quod fa- 
num rex ejusdem provincise Aldwulf, qui nostra setate fuit, usque 
ad suum tempus perdurasse, et se in pueritia vidisse testabatur." 



2 , Q THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. berht was little likely ; and we can hardly fail to con- 

The strife nect the strife which must have arisen over this re- 

"querorT'jection of the religion of Kent with the next inci- 

577^617 dent m ^ e mstor y °f East Anglia. It was "while 

~ „ ^Ethelberht was still living" that Rsedwald took his 

RadwalcTs . . . . 

supremacy, place as overlord in Mid-Britain. 1 Religion, indeed, 
may have furnished only a pretext for the rising of 
the East Anglians. At this moment they formed 
the strongest, as they were the most clearly defined, 
of the central tribes between the H umber and the 
Thames. From the rest of the island their land was 
almost entirely cut off by the fens that bordered it 
on the north, and bent round to join the great forest 
belt which stretched along its western border, while 
the broad estuary of the Stour parted it from Essex 
on the south. The easy access to its shores from 
the German coast had probably aided in giving a 
specially Teutonic character to its population ; and 
the recent gathering of its conquering tribes under 
a single king furnished a stock of warlike energy 
which found an outlet in the subjection of their 
neighbors. It was, we can hardly doubt, from a rec- 
ognition of their superior strength, that, while the 
East Saxons still clung to the Kentish king, 2 the rest 
of his subject peoples threw off his supremacy, and 
accepted in its place the supremacy of Raedwald. 
Of the incidents of this great revolution we are told 

1 After describing ^Ethelberht's " imperium " over the English 
states south of the Humber, and stating that ^Ethelberht was the 
third who " imperium hujusmodi obtinuit," Baeda says, " quartus, 
Rsedwald, rex Orientalium Anglorum, qui etiam vivente -iEdilbercto 
eidem suae genti ducatum praebebat" (Hist. Eccl. ii. 5). 

2 I conclude this from Mellitus remaining at London till ^Ethel- 
berht's death (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5). 



577-617. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 3I 

nothing. But, revolution as it was, it marked how chap. v. 
permanent the threefold division of Britain had now The strife 
become. If Mid-Britain threw off the supremacy of "^^ 
Kent, its states none the less remained a political 
aggregate ; and their fresh union under the King of 
East Anglia was only a prelude to their final and 
lasting union under the lordship of Mercia. 

That the revolution which set Raedwald of East <&tM- 
Anglia over the tribes of Mid-Britain was wrought 
with so little change, save the isolation of Kent and 
of Essex, was probably due to the fact that both the 
great powers of the south and of the north were too 
busied at the time with troubles of their own to med- 
dle in those of their neighbors. In Wessex, Ceol- 
wulf was still carrying on the long strife of his reign, 
and battling " incessantly against Angles or Welsh." 1 
To the civil struggles within his realm were added 
attacks from without. In 607 we find him fighting 
on the southeastern border of his kingdom against 
the South Saxons f and when he was succeeded by 
his nephew Cynegils, the grandson of Cutha, in 61 1* 
the accession of. the young king was followed by an 
inroad of the Britons which carried them into the 
heart of the realm. In 6 1 4, Cynegils fought at Bamp- 
ton in Oxfordshire against the Welshmen, and the 
importance of the battle was shown by the fall of 
two thousand Britons on the field. 4 How vigorous 

1 E. Chron. a. 597. 

2 E. Chron. a. 607. This loss of Sussex may mark the date of the 
break-up of ^Ethelberht's supremacy. 

3 E. Chron. a. 611. 

4 E. Chron. a". 614. "This year Cynegils and Cwichelm fought at 
Beandun, and slew three thousand and sixty- five Welshmen." 
Beandun is supposed to be Bampton in Oxfordshire. If so, the 



2^2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

char v. the temper of the Welsh continued to be is clear 
The strife from the fact that this inroad of the Southern Britons 
querors! 1 into Wessex followed one of the most terrible over- 
577-617 throws which the Britons of the north had as yet re- 
— ceived. Since his victory at Daegsa's Stan, in 603, 
the energies of ^Ethelfrith seem to have been spent 
in coping with the disaffection of Deira. The 
spirit of national independence was quickened afresh 
among the Deirans as the heirs of their kingly stock 
grew to manhood, and the presence of these heirs on 
his border became a danger which called yEthelfrith 
to action. On the fall of Deira, the House of ^Ella 
had found a refuge, it is said, among their British 
neighbors ; and at this time — if we accept Welsh tra- 
dition — they were sheltered by the King of Gwynedd, 
a district which then embraced the bulk of the pres- 
ent North Wales, 1 and through its outlier of Elmet 
pushed forward into the heart of Southern Deira. 
The danger of a league between the Deirans and 
the Welsh was one which ^Ethelfrith could not over- 
look ; and it was to meet this danger that he broke 
in 613 through the barrier that had so long held the 
Engle of the north at bay. 

raid was on the valley of the Cherwell, and the Welsh may have 
struck over the Cotswolds by Cirencester. They may have been in 
league, as before, with the Hwiccas. 

1 We shall return afterwards to these sons of ^lla. All we know 
from English sources is that in 614— a year later — Hereric (^Ella's 
grandson) and his family " exularet sub rege Brittonum Cerdice " 
(Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 23), and with him may have been ^Ella's son 
Eadwine. But who was this " King Cerdic of the Britons ?" Hus- 
sey (note to Baeda, p. 225) makes him a king "in Elmet;" Geoffrey 
of Monmouth places him between Maelgwn and Cadvan or Cad- ' 
walla as king of Gwynedd. I have attempted to reconcile these ac- 
counts in the text. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 233 

Though the deep indent in the Yorkshire shire chap. v. 
line to the west proves how vigorously the Deirans The strife 
had pushed up the river-valleys into the moors, it querors 11 " 
shows that they had been arrested by the pass at the 577^7 
head of Ribblesdale ; while further to the south the Bl ^f e of 
Roman road that crossed the moors from York to Chester. 
Manchester was blocked by the unconquered fast- 
nesses of Elmet, which reached away to the yet more 
difficult fastnesses of the Peak. But the line of de- 
fence was broken as the forces of ^Ethelfrith pushed 
over the moors along Ribblesdale into our Southern 
Lancashire. His march was upon Chester, the cap- 
ital of Gwynedd, and probably the refuge -place of 
Eadwine. From the first the position of Chester 
had marked it out as of military and political impor- 
tance. Once masters of Central Britain, the Romans 
had sought for a military post from which a legion 
could watch alike the wild tribes of our Lancashire 
and Lake district, and the yet wilder tribes of the 
present North Wales. They found such a position 
at a point where the Dee, after flowing in a direct 
course from the south, bends suddenly westward, and 
slants thence to its estuary in the Irish Sea. Just 
at this turn to the west a rise of red sandstone which 
abutted on the river along its northern bank offered 
a site for a town; and it was on this site that the 
Roman camp was established which grew as men 
gathered round it into the city of Deva, whose other 
name of Castrum Legionum has come down to us 
in the form of Chester. The form of Deva recalled 
its military origin. The town was, in fact, a rough 
square of houses through which the road from Cum- 
bria, entering by the north gate, struck to the bridge 



2 ^ 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

charv. across the Dee on the south, while in the very cen- 
The strife tre of the place the line of this road was crossed at 
°querors. right angles by the road from Central Britain to 
577^617. Wales, the famous Watling Street, which came over 
— the low water-shed of the Trent and entered the city 
. by its eastern gate. Deva, therefore, not only held 
the passage over the Dee, but commanded the line 
of communication from Central Britain to both the 
northwest and the west ; and so important a post 
was naturally guarded by fortifications of no com- 
mon order. The river, indeed, which, after passing 
the city, makes a fresh bend to the north, furnished 
a natural line of defence on the south and the west 
of the town, for a thin strip of marsh which filled 
the lower ground between the bridge and the gate 
that led to it widened on the west into a broad mo- 
rass which is now represented by the meadows of 
the Rood-eye. 1 On the east and the north, where no 
such natural barrier presented itself, the site of the 
town was cut off from the general level of the sand- 
stone rise by a trench hewn deeply in the soft red 
rock, over which still tower the massive walls which, 
patched and changed as they have been in later days, 
are still mainly the work of Rome. At the news of 
the danger of Chester, Brocmael, the Prince of 
Powys, marched anew from his home at Pengwyrn, 
the after Shrewsbury, to rescue the city from the 
Northumbrians, as he had rescued it, only twenty 
years before, from the West Saxons. But the terror 
of a coming doom had fallen on the Britons. Two 
thousand monks dwelt some miles from the city in 

1 See Mr. Freeman's map, Norman Conquest, iv. 311. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 ,r 

one of those vast religious settlements which charac- chap. v. 



terized Celtic Christianity, and, after a three days' The strife 
fast, a thousand of these made their way to the field ^Serors! 1 
to pray for their countrymen, ^thelfrith watched 577 ^" 17 
the wild gestures of the monks as they stood apart — 
from the host with arms outstretched in prayer, and 
bade his men slay them in the coming fight. " Bear 
they arms or no," said the king, " they fight against 
us when they cry against us to their God." Aban- 
doned by Brocmael, who fled before the English on- 
set, the monks were the first to fall ; but the heavy 
loss sustained by the Northumbrian army proved the 
stubbornness of the British resistance. 1 All, how- 
ever, was in vain, and the victory of ^thelfrith was 
followed by the fall of Chester ; while the district 
over which the wasted city had ruled — a district 
which seems to have stretched from Nantwich as 
far as the Mersey or perhaps the Ribble — fell, with 
the city itself, into the hands of the Northumbrians. 

The battle of Chester marked a fresh step forward its results. 
in the struggle with the Welsh. By their victory at 
Deorham the West Saxons had cut off the Britons 
of Dyvnaint — of our Dorset, Somerset, Devon, and 
Cornwall — from the general body of their race. 
What remained was broken anew into two parts by 
the battle of Chester ; for the conquest of ^Ethelfrith 
had parted the Britons of what we now call Wales, 
from the Britons of Cumbria and Strathclyde. From 
this moment, therefore, Britain as a country ceased 
to exist. No general resistance of the Welsh peo- 
ple was henceforth possible, and the warfare of Briton 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 2. 



236 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



577-617. 



chap. v. asrainst Englishman died down into a warfare of 
The strife separate English kingdoms against separate British 
°querors n " kingdoms — of Northumbria against the Cumbrians 
and Strathclyde, of Mercia against the Welsh be- 
tween Anglesea and the British Channel, of Wessex 
against the tract which stretches from Mendip to 
the Land's End. Nor was the victory of less impor- 
tance to England itself. With it the Northumbrian 
kingdom was drawn from its isolated existence be- 
yond the Humber. Even had no dynastic interests 
forced ^Ethelfrith, as they were soon to force him, 
into conflict with his fellow- Englishmen in the 
south, the very fact that he was brought into actual 
contact with them would have- made new relations 
inevitable. Till now the estuary of the Humber and 
the huge swamp that stretched from it to the fast- 
nesses of Elmet had served as an effectual barrier 
between Northumbria and Mid - Britain. But this 
barrier was turned when the capture of Chester and 
of its district brought the Northumbrians to the 
west of what had till now been the " English March." 
The low rise which forms the water-shed between 
the basins of the Trent and the Severn was a far 
different barrier from the Humber and the Fen ; it 
is so insignificant, indeed, that to one who looks 
from the heights of Cranborne Chase the great cen- 
tral plain through which the Trent rolls its waters 
seems to bend without a break from Yorkshire round 
the blue mountains of the Peak through the plains 
of Cheshire to the sea. That the Britons had held 
such a border so long against the Mercians shows 
the stubbornness of their defence as well, perhaps, 
as the weakness of these " West-English " assailants ; 




Stanford's L'dographi Esiai/i 



2-g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. but it could form no lasting or effective barrier be- 
Thestrife tween Mid-Britain and the great Northern kingdom 
°qMr£T which thus found itself on its flank. 
577~6i7 Fresh, indeed, from the glory of his victory at 
— Chester, v^thelfrith could not fail to wake to new 
Kent, dreams of ambition as he looked to the south. Wes- 
sex seemed weaker than ever. A new king, Cynegils, 
had mounted its throne on Ceolwulf's death, in 61 1 ;' 
but the strife within and without went on without a 
check ; and in the very year after the fall of Ches- 
ter, in 614, a Welsh army, as we have seen, in union 
perhaps, as before, with the Hwiccas, succeeded in 
penetrating into the heart of the West-Saxon realm. 
They were defeated, indeed, at Bampton, in the 
Cherwell valley, with a great slaughter ; but their in- 
road showed that if the Britons were no match for 
Northumbria, they were still strong enough and bold 
enough to form a match for the West Saxons. The 
power, too, that had risen on the ruin of Wessex had 
as suddenly collapsed. The supremacy which but a 
few years before Kent had wielded over all Mid- 
Britain between Watlins: Street and the Humber 
had shrivelled in the later days of ^Ethelberht into 
a supremacy over the East Saxons alone. And at 
yEthelberht's death, in 616, 2 even this fragment of its 
older empire was lost. Saeberct died in the same 
year as his overlord, and the sons of King Saeberct 
threw off their father's faith. The two young kings 
burst into the church at London where Bishop Mel- 
litus was saying mass. " Why don't you give us that 
white bread which you gave to our father Saba ?" 

1 E. Chron. a. 611. 

2 E. Chron. a. 616 ; Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 ^g 

they cried. The bishop bade them first be baptized, chap. v. 
but they refused to enter the font. " We have no The strife 
need of that," they answered, " but we want to re- querors"" 
fresh ourselves with that bread ;" and a renewed offer 57 ^T 17 
of baptism was met with a sulky bidding to begone — 
from their land, since he would not hearken to them 
in so small a matter. 1 The rejection of the new faith 
was a sign that the East Saxons had thrown off their 
subjection to the power which had thrust Christian- 
ity on them. But that power itself seemed bent on 
throwing off the new faith ; for when Mellitus crossed 
the Thames, he found even Kent in the throes of a 
religious reaction. yEthelberht's son Eadbald de- 
clared himself a heathen, and, in the old heathen 
fashion, took his father's wife for his own. In spite 
of its twenty years' continuance in the land, the new 
faith had little hold on the Kentishmen; and they 
followed Eadbald to the altar of Woden as they had 
followed yEthelberht to the altar of Christ. Melli- 
tus, with Bishop Justus of Rochester, fled over to 
Gaul, while Laurentius of Canterbury, who was pro- 
posing to follow them, spent the eve of his departure 
in the Church of St. Peter and St. Paul. 2 A dream, 
however, in which the first appeared to him, and 
scourged him for his cowardice, drove him in the 
morning to a fresh remonstrance with the king. 
The marks of the scourge, and the wondrous tale 
told by Laurentius, did their work. Eadbald " feared 
much," and the fear was strong enough to again 
overturn the worship of Woden and restore through- 
out Kent the worship of Christ. 



1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5. 2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 6. 



of the Con 
querors. 

577-617. 

Eadwine. 



2 40 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. But, isolated as it had become, and torn as it must 
me strife have been with this religious strife, Kent ceased to 
be of weight in English politics. Its power over 
Mid-Britain had passed, as we have seen, to East 
Anglia ; and it was along the bounds of Rasdwald's 
overlordship that the borders of the Northumbrian 
kingdom now stretched from the Humber to the 
headwaters of the Trent. A collision would have 
been inevitable in any case, but it was hastened by the 
jealousy with which ^Ethelfrith followed the move- 
ments of the House of ^lla. 1 Of ^Ella's children, 
the elder had died in exile ; and his son Hereric, 
while sheltered at the court of the British king Cer- 
dic, after the battle of Chester, was removed by poi- 
son in 615. 2 But a second child of ^Ella's still re- 
mained. Eadwine had been but a boy three years 



1 On the invasion of Deira by ^Ethelric in 589, two sons of yElla 
had fled from their fatherland into exile. One of these, whose 
name is lost, must have already reached manhood, for in the early 
years of his exile he became the father of Hereric, whose name has 
been preserved to us through the sanctity of his child, Hild. As 
we hear no more of him, this elder son must have died in those 
years of wandering. His son Hereric, with his wife Bregeswid and 
their two children, Hereswid, who afterwards married ^Ethelhere 
(Breda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 23), King of East Anglia, and the more cele- 
brated Hild, who founded the House of Whitby, was, in Hild's 
infancy (and she was born in 614), " in exile with Cerdic, a king 
of the Britons," and was then poisoned. Eadwine, ^Ella's other 
son, must have been much younger than his unnamed brother ; he 
can, in fact, have been little older than his nephew Hereric, for 
he was but twenty -eight when Hereric, already a father of two 
children, was murdered (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 23; Flor. Wore. ed. 
Thorpe, vol. i. 268). It is noteworthy that one daughter of ^Ella, 
Acha, who remained in Deira, became ^Ethelfrith's wife ; a mar- 
riage clearly intended to reconcile the Deirans to his rule. 

2 " Cum vir ejus Hereric exularet sub rege Brittonum Cerdice, 
ubi ab veneno periit " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 23). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 ^ 



old when his house was driven into exile, and it was chap. v. 
only at Hereric's death that he became the repre- The strife 
sentative of the kingly stock of Deira. While his ° qU erors n " 
brother's line found shelter among the Welsh, he 57 ^ 17 
seems to have sought refuge among the wild fast- — 
nesses over the Mercian border ' with Cearl, who was 
at that time King of the Mercians. Cearl gave the 
fugitive his daughter Ouaenburg to wife ; and two 
boys were born of this marriage. 2 But even from 
Mercia Eadwine was at last driven, doubtless by the 
pressure of his Northumbrian rival; and in 617 he 
appeared at the court of the East Angles, where 
Raedwald gave him welcome and promises of se- 
curity. 

The welcome and pledge showed, perhaps, that the Eadwine 
East- Anglian king; believed war with the North- Radwaid. 
umbrians to be inevitable. Eadwine's presence, in- 
deed, at his court was no sooner announced in the 
north than three embassies from ^Ethelfrith followed 
in quick succession, each offering gold for Eadwine's 
murder, or threatening war if his life were spared. 3 In 
spite of his pledges, greed and the fear of war seemed 



1 "Cum persequente ilium ^Edilfrido per diversa occultus loca 
vel regna multo annorum tempore profugus vagaretur, tandem ve- 
nit ad Rsedwaldum " (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 12). 

2 " Osfrid et Eadfrid, filii regis iEdwini, qui ambo ei exuli nati sunt 
de Qusenburga, filia Cearli regis Merciorum " (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 
14). The boys were born, therefore, before 617, when Eadwine's 
" exile " ceased ; and in 633 Osfrid was old enough to have a son, 
Yffi, who was carried off to Kent with the children of Eadwine 
(Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20). But as Osfrid is called "bellicosus juve- 
nis " when he fell at Hsethfield in 633, he may well have been some 
eighteen years old, which would bring his birth and Quaenburg's 
marriage to the period just after the battle of Chester. 

3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 12, 

16 



of the Con 
querors. 

577-617. 



242 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. to shake the resolve of Rasdwald ; and he promised 
The strife the envoys either to slay the yElling, or to give him 
'into their hands. It was at sunset that a friend of 
the exile who had learned the king's will called 
Eadwine from his sleeping-chamber to warn him of 
the danger and offer him guidance to a fresh lurk- 
ing-place. The noble temper of one who was des- 
tined to greatness breathed in the exile's answer. 
" I cannot do this thing," he said ; " I cannot be the 
first to treat the pledge which I have received from 
so great a king as a thing of nought, and that when 
he has done me no wrong, nor shown me enmity. 
Better, if I am to die," he ended, in words that told 
of the weariness of a life of wandering: — " better 
Rasdwald should slay me than some meaner man!" 
The silence of the night gathered round Eadwine 
as he sat where his friend had left him on the stone 
bench at the door of the king's court. Suddenly a 
man drew near in the dusk, and asked him why at 
that hour, when others slept, he alone kept watch 
through the night. The look and dress of the man 
were foreign and strange to him; as we shall see 
hereafter, they were probably those of a Roman 
priest, Paulinus, who had come northward from 
Kent, and may now have been in secret communi- 
cation with Raedwald's queen. The king had re- 
vealed to his wife his purpose of betrayal, but her 
vehement remonstrances had again changed his 
mood, and he had pledged himself afresh to defend 
the exile. The keen-witted Italian knew how to 
make market of the news he had learned. Heedless 
of the first haughty repulse of his greeting, he asked 
Eadwine what meed he would give to one who 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



243 



would free him from his cares, what meed to one chap. v. 
who promised that he should live to surpass in The strife 
power every English king that had gone before qU erors. 
him? The thunder-struck exile promised a meed 577 I^ 17i 
worthy such tidings. " And what," went on the 
stranger, " if he who foretold this could show thee 
better rede for life and soul than any of thy kin ever 
heard ! wouldst thou hearken to his rede ?" Eadwine 
gave his pledge ; and setting his hand on the exile's 
head with a bidding that with this sign he would 
hereafter claim the promise, the stranger vanished 
so rapidly in the dusk that Eadwine held his voice 
to have been the voice of a spirit. 

It is possible that the king's wavering and nego- Battle of 
tiation had been little more than a blind to deceive 
^Ethelfrith while the East English were gathering to 
attack him; for the refusal to surrender Eadwine 
was at once followed by the march of Raedwald's 
army to the Mercian border. The sudden attack 
took i^thelfrith by surprise. He seems to have 
been backing his threats by an advance with a small 
force through the tangled country along the fen 
which covered the valley of the lower Trent ; for it 
was here that Raedwald's army attacked him as it 
emerged from the marshes on the banks of the Idle. 
The encounter was a memorable one. If Wimble- 
don was the first recorded fight between the peoples 
of the conquerors, the fight between Raedwald and 
yEthelfrith was the first combat between the great 
powers who had now grouped these peoples about 
them. But we know nothing of the battle itself. It 
ended in a victory of the East-Anglian king; but 
only a snatch of northern song — " Foul ran Idle with 



244 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. v. the blood of Englishmen " — has preserved the mem- 
Thestrife ory of the day when the little stream of Idle saw 
0f qu h ero C r s n "^thelfrith's defeat and fall. 1 



577-617. 



1 E. Chron. (Peterborough), a. 617 ; Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 12. Baeda 
marks the spot as " in finibus gentis Merciorum " (z. e. of the Mercia 
of his own day), "ad orientalem plagam amnis qui vocatur Idlse." 
Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (Arnold), p. 56, gives the proverb, " unde 
dicitur, amnis Idle Anglorum sanguine sorduit." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



245 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE NORTHUMBRIAN SUPREMACY. 
617-659. 

The gathering of the conquering peoples who had Eadwine 

& . , & .. , J? . . & . r , in North- 

encamped on the soil 01 Britain into three great umtna. 
kingdoms, a process which we may look on as fairly 
completed at the time of the battle of the Idle, 
seemed the natural prelude to a fusion of these 
kingdoms themselves into a single England. It is, 
indeed, the effort to bring about this union that 
forms the history of the English people for the next 
two hundred years, and that gives meaning and in- 
terest to what Milton scorned as "battles of kites 
and crows" — the long struggles of Northumbrian, 
Mercian, and West-Saxon kings to establish their 
supremacy over the general mass of Englishmen. In 
this struggle Northumbria took the lead. The attack 
of ^Ethelfrith upon Raedwald was, in fact, the open- 
ing of such a contest. But its issue seemed to have 
been fatal to any projects of establishing a suprem- 
acy; for the fall of ^Ethelfrith not only preserved 
the independence of Mid-Britain, but it broke up for 
the moment the kingdom which his sword had held 
together. On his defeat, Deira rose against her Ber- 
nician masters, and again called the line of yElla in 
its representative, Eadwine, to its throne. Eadwine, 
however, was as resolute to hold the two realms to- 



•46 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. aether as ^thelfrith had been ; and he was no sooner 
The welcomed back by his people of Yorkshire than he 
Ensu- marched northward to make the whole of Northum- 
premacy. ^ r j a ^is owru As ft had been originally created by 
617-659. the subjection of Deira to the King of the Berni- 
cians, so it was now held together by the subjection 
of Bernicia to the King of the Deirans. The march 
of Eadwine drove yEthelfrith's seven sons from their 
father's realm ; and, followed by a train of young 
thegns, whose exile was probably the result of a fruit- 
less struggle, the descendants of Ida found refuge 
over the Forth among the Picts. 1 
Eimet. Nor was there any loss of strength for the realm 
under its new ruler. Eadwine was in the prime of 
life "when he mounted the throne, and the work of 
government was carried on with as ceaseless an en- 
ergy as that of v^Ethelfrith himself. On his north- 
ern border, if we may trust a tradition drawn from 
its name, Eadwine crowned a hill which overlooks 
the Firth of Forth with his own " Eadwine's burh," 
or Edinburgh, which was to grow from a mere border 
post against the Picts into the capital of a northern 
kingdom. But it was not in the north or in the 
northwest that this main work seems to have been 
done. To the Bernician house of Ida, the most 
pressing foes would be the Britons of Cumbria and 
Strathclyde ; but to the Deiran house of y£lla the 
most pressing foes were the Britons of Elmet. York, 
and not Bamborough, was the centre of Eadwine's 
kingdom, and from any of the Roman towers which 
still recall the older glories of that city, the young 

j Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. i. 

2 He must have been at his accession about thirty years old. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



247 



king could see rising but a few miles off to the west- chap. vi. 
ward the woodlands and moorlands of a British The 
realm. The kingdom which thus fronted Eadwine bSansu- 
covered no small space of the present Yorkshire. premacy - 
On the south it extended to the fastnesses of the 617-659. 
Peak, where the Pecsetan of the Middle English were 
still, no doubt, pressing slowly up the valleys of the 
Derwent and the Dove. To the west its border can 
hardly have run in any other line than along the 
higher moorlands of the chain that parts our York- 
shire from our Lancashire. How far Elmet extended 
to the north we have nothing to tell us; but from 
the character of the ground itself we may fairly 
gather that the later forest of Knaresborough formed 
a portion of its area, and that it extended in this di- 
rection as far as the upper valleys of the Wharfe 
and the Nidd. Its eastern boundary, which is more 
important for our story, can luckily be fixed with 
greater precision ; for the road which the Roman 
engineers drew northward from their bridge over 
the Don at Danum, or Doncaster, and which bent 
in a shallow curve by Castleford and by Tadcaster 
to York, skirted the very edge of the forest tract 
which remained in possession of the Britons. Here 
Leeds itself preserves the name of Loidis, by which 
Elmet seems also to have been known, while Bar- 
wick in Elmet shows by its position how closely the 
edo'e of the British kingdom must have run to the 
Roman road. 

The kingdom of Elmet then answered, roughly 
speaking, to the present West Riding of Yorkshire ; 
but no contrast can be imagined more complete than 
the contrast between the district of to-day, with its 



248 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. huge towns and busy industries, and the Elmet of 
The Eadwine's day. The bulk of its area must then have 
brianlu- been, as it remained indeed down to the seventeenth 
premacy. cen t U ry, among the loneliest and most desolate parts 
617-659. of Britain. In the south the great woodland which 
covered it long remained unchanged. As late as 
Henry the Eighth's days, Sir Thomas Wortley could 
set his lodge on the crag of Wharncliffe, in the midst 
of the huge oak forest through which the Don, here 
little more than a mountain torrent, hurries down to 
the plain, " for his plesor to hear the harte's bell " 
amidst the stillness of the woods. More to the north 
by Wakefield, the priory of Nostell, in the vale of 
Calder, tells in its name that the place was still a 
North Stall of foresters in the woodland when, in the 
days of the Norman kings, a royal chaplain gathered 
the hermits whom he found dwelling in its quiet 
glades into a religious house ; while along the skirts 
of this district stretched the Barnsdale, whose " merry 
greenwood " gave a home to the outlaws and broken 
men of Robin Hood. To the north was a vast reach 
of bare moorlands scored with the deep and grassy 
vales of the Wharfe and the Nidd, while in the very 
heart of the kingdom thickets and forests, in which 
the last wolf ever seen in Yorkshire is said to have 
been killed by John of Gaunt, formed a screen for 
the town which still, after so many changes and 
chances, preserves its original British name of Loidis, 
or Leeds. 1 
Conquest j\ f ew m iles to the northward, indeed, of Leeds 
traces have been found of Roman iron-works, but all 

1 When the Cistercians settled at Kirkstall, close to Leeds, in the 
twelfth century, they found nothing there "prseter ligna et lapides." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 aq 



signs of industrial life had probably long disappeared CHAp - vi. 
when Eadwine marched from York for the conquest The 
of Elmet. 1 His immediate ground of attack was briansu- 
possibly a wish to avenge the poisoning of his un- premacy - 
cle, Hereric, by its king, Cerdic ; but we know noth- 617-659. 
ing of the winning of this district or of its settle- 
ment. On the very edge of the British kingdom, 
however, on a rise of ground westward of the road 
from Castleford to Tadcaster, we find what is prob- 
ably a memorial of this conquest in the group of 
earthworks at Barwick in Elmet, intrenchments and 
ditches enclosing a large area with a mound in its 
centre, which probably marks the site of one of the 
burhs or fortified houses with which Eadwine held 
down the country he had subdued. At Leeds itself, 
too, the king seems to have established a royal vill, 
which would be of the same military character ; while 
yet further to the westward, in the upper valley of 
the Calder, where no " Othere " had as yet settled in 
the " field " of the coming Huddersfield, but through 
which a solitary track struck to the border moor- 
lands, we may perhaps find the site of another of 
Eadwine's dwellings and fortresses beside the site 
of the ruins of Campodunum. 2 

1 The only authority for the date of this conquest is Nennius, cap. 
63 : " Eoguin, Alius Alii, . . . occupavit Elmet, et expulit Certic, re- 
gem illius regionis." But we know from Baeda that Elmet was in 
Eadwine's hands before his death. 

2 After his conversion, Eadwine " in Campoduno, ubi tunc villa 
regia erat, fecit basilicam " (Baeda, ii. 14). (Alfred's paraphrase, 
however, gives for Campodunum " Donafelda," which Gale believes 
to be Tanfield by Ripon, near the Swale.) It was burned after Ead- 
wine's fall, but its altar was preserved in Baeda's day in the monas- 
tery of Abbot Thrydulf, "quod est in silva Elmete " (ibid.) ; and in 
its stead "pro qua reges posteriores fecerc sibi villam in regione 



2 c THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. But in such a region we naturally find scanty 
The traces of English settlement. The importance of 
bSansu- the conquest, indeed, lay not so much in its addition 
premacy. f long ranges of moorland and woodland to Ead- 
617-659. wine's realm as in its clearing away the barrier which 
Conquest this British kingdom interposed between Northum- 
YoutL bria and yEthelfrith's conquests to the south of the 
Ribble. The kingdom of Eadwine thus stretched 
without a break from the eastern to the western sea, 
and Chester must have acquired a new importance 
as the western seaport of Eadwine's realm, for it can 
only have been in the harbor of Chester that the 
king can have equipped the fleet which he needed 
to subdue the sites of Anglesea and Man. 1 But the 
conquest of Elmet did more than raise Northumbria 
into a sea power. With the reduction of this district, 
the border of the northern king-dom stretched with- 
out a break along the border of Mid-Britain, and the 
pressure of Eadwine upon the Southern Engle be- 
came irresistible. Raedwald's death followed imme- 
diately after his victory at the Idle, 2 and the do- 
minion he had built up may have fallen to pieces in 
the hands of his son Eorpwald ; it is, at any rate, 
certain that before the close of his reign the tribes 
of the Trent valley 3 had come to own the supremacy 

quae vocatur Loidis" (ibid.). The " Elmedssetna," with their terri- 
tory of six hundred hides mentioned in the old list given by Kem- 
ble (Saxons in England, vol. i. p. 81), are probably the settlers in El- 
met after its conquest. 

1 " Mevanias Brittonum insulas, quae inter Hiberniam et Brittan- 
niam sitae sunt, Anglorum subjecit imperio " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5). 

2 Eorpwald succeeded him in 617 (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15; see 
Hussey's note). 

3 Paulinus baptized " praesente rege Eadwine " in the Trent val- 
ley at Tiovulfingacaester ; and this conversion of the Lindsey folk, 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 $I 

of Eadwine. It was, in fact, his mastery over Mid- chap. vi. 
Britain that brought the Northumbrian king to The 
the borders of Wessex. Eadwine prepared for a briansu- 
struggle with this last rival by a marriage with the P rema °y- 
daughter of the Kentish king, Eadbald, which if it 617-659. 
did not imply the subjection of the Kentish king- ' 
dom, in any case bound it to his side. In the sum- 
mer of 625, 1 the priest Paulinus brought yEthelburh 
or Tate to the Northumbrian Court at York. The 
marriage was taken by the West Saxons as a signal 
of the coming attack ; and a story preserved by 
Baeda tells something of the fierceness of the strug- 
gle which ended in the subjection of the conquerors 
of Southern Britain to the supremacy of Northum- 
bria. In the Easter court of 626,* which he held in 
a king's town near the river Derwent, Eadwine gave 
audience to Eumer, an envoy of the West Saxons. 
Eumer brought a message from Cwichelm, who was 
now joined in their kingship with his brother Cyne- 
gils ; but in the midst of the conference he started to 
his feet, drew a dagger from his robe, and flung him- 
self on the Northumbrian sovereign. Lilla, a thegn 
of the royal war band, threw himself between Ead- 
wine and the assassin ; but so fell was the stroke that 
even through Lilla's body the dagger still reached the 
king. The wound, however, was slight, and Ead- 
wine was soon able to avenge it by marching on 
the West Saxons and slaying or subduing all who 



with the establishment of a bishop's see at Lincoln, must have been 
brought about by the same influence (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 16), as 
well as the conversion of the East-Anglian king Eorpwald (ibid. 
cap. 15). 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9. 2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9. 



2 c 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. had conspired against him. 1 The issue of such a 
The triumph must have been the recognition of his su- 

brYan su-" premacy by Cynegils f and with the submission of 

premacy. Cynegils the overlordship of Eadwine practically 

617-659. stretched over the whole of Britain. 

Eadwine's In the nine eventful years which had passed since 
he mounted his father's throne, Eadwine had thus 
gathered the whole English race into a single polit- 
ical body. 3 He was king or overlord of every Eng- 
lish kingdom, save of Kent ; and Kent was knit to 
him by his marriage with ^Ethelburh. The gath- 
ering of the English conquerors into the three great 
southern, midland, and northern groups, which had 
characterized the past forty years, from the battle of 
Deorham to the battle of the Idle, seemed to have 
ended in their gathering into a single people in 
the hand of Eadwine. Under Eadwine, indeed, the 
greatness of Northumbria reached its height. With- 
in his own dominions the king displayed a genius 
for civil government which shows how utterly the 
mere age of conquest had passed away. With him 
began an English proverb often applied to after- 
kings, " A woman with her babe might walk scathe- 
less from sea to sea in Eadwine's days." 4 Peaceful 
communication revived along the deserted highways ; 

1 E. Chron. a. 626 ; Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9. 

2 " In deditionem recepit " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9). 

3 " Ita ut, quod nemo Anglorum ante eum, omnes Brittannise 
fines, qua vel ipsorum vel Brittonum provinciae habitant, sub ditione 
acceperit" (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9). " Majore potentia cunctis qui 
Brittanniam incolunt, Anglorum pariter et Brittonum, populis prae- 
fuit praeter Cantuariis tantum " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5). 

* Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 16. The words "from sea to sea" show- 
that this order was not confined to Eadwine's own Deira, but ex- 
tended over his newer conquests of Elmet and the Ribble country. 




Sta • ifo rd 's Oeographi Esta(*i~ 



Northum 
brian Su 



2 ca THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. the springs by the roadside were marked with stakes, 
The and a cup was set beside each for the traveller's 
refreshment. Some faint traditions of the Roman 

premacy. p as t ma y nave flung their glory round what Baeda 

617-659. ventures to call this " Empire of the English ;" some 
of the Roman majesty had, at any rate, come back 
with its long-lost peace. Nor is it without signifi- 
cance that we find Eadwine's capital established at 
York. A hundred years had passed since its con- 
quest by the Deirans had left the city a desolate 
ruin; but its natural advantages as the centre of a 
fertile tract and as the highest point to which sea- 
traversing boats could find their way up the Ouse 
must soon have begun to draw population again to 
its site. We do not, however, hear of its new life 
till we find Eadwine established at York as his cap- 
ital, 1 and the choice of such a settlement in a spot 
where so much remained to tell of the greatness of 
Rome can hardly have failed to connect itself with 
the imperial dreams which were stirring in the mind 
of Eadwine. In his wide rule over the whole of 
Britain, Eadwine seems to have felt himself a suc- 
cessor to its Roman masters. A standard of pur- 
ple and gold floated before him as he rode through 
village and township, while a feather-tuft attached 
to a« spear, the Roman tufa, was borne in front of 
him as he walked through their streets. 2 
Conversion g u ^ t ne effort for a political unity was a premature 

umbria. effort. Not till two hundred years were past were 
the English peoples to be really gathered into a sin- 
gle realm. Not till three hundred years were gone 

1 Beeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 14. 2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 16. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



255 



by was a real national life to develop itself in a sin- CHAP - VI - 
gle England. The work was, indeed, to be in great The 
measure brought about by the very agency which at brian su" 
this moment came to wreck the work of Eadwine. premacy - 
Though Christianity had shrunk back since the 617-659. 
death of /Ethelberht within the bounds of the Kent- 
ish kingdom, the hope of carrying out Gregory's 
wider plans of conversion had never been abandon- 
ed ; and in the marriage of ^thelburh with Eadwine, 
Archbishop Justus saw an opening for attempting 
the conquest of the north. The new queen brought 
with her as her chaplain Paulinus, whom we have 
already seen in East Anglia. He had been conse- 
crated as Bishop of York in preparation for this 
journey ; and his tall, stooping form, slender, aquiline 
nose, and black hair falling round a thin, worn face, 
were long remembered in the north. /Ethelburh's 
zeal for her faith reaped its reward ; for, moved by 
her prayers, Eadwine promised to believe in her 
God if he returned successful from the fight with 
the West Saxons. But he was slow to redeem 
his pledge. Whether the fate of y^Ethelberht had 
warned him or no, he spent the whole winter in silent 
musing, 1 till Paulinus, laying his hand on his head, 
revealed himself as the stranger who had promised 
Eadwine deliverance in Rasdwald's court, and claim- 
ed the fulfilment of the pledge which the exile had 
given. 2 Moved, it may be, by the appeal, or con- 
vinced by the long musings of the winter-tide, Ead- 
wine declared himself a Christian, and in the spring 

1 " Ssepe diu solus residens, ore quidem tacito, sed in intimis cor- 
dis multa secum conloquens" (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 9). 

2 Beeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 12. 



256 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. of 627 he gathered the wise men of Northumbria 
The to give their rede on the faith he had embraced. 
brSttSu- The record of the debate which followed is of sin- 
premacy. g U } ar interest as revealing the sides of Christianity 
617-659. which pressed most on our forefathers. To finer 
minds its charm lay then, as now, in the light it 
threw on the darkness which encompassed men's 
lives — the darkness of the future as of the past. 
" So seems the life of man, O king," burst forth an 
aged ealdorman, " as a sparrow's flight through the 
hall when one is sitting at meat in winter-tide, with 
the warm fire lighted on the hearth, but the icy 
rain-storm without. The sparrow flies in at one 
door, and tarries for a moment in the light and heat 
of the hearth -fire, and then, flying forth from the 
other, vanishes into the darkness whence it came. 
So tarries for a moment the life of man in our sight; 
but what is before it, what after it, we know not. If 
this new teaching tells us aught certainly of these, 
let us follow it." Coarser argument told on the 
crowd. " None of your folk, Eadwine, have wor- 
shipped the gods more busily than I," said Coifi the 
priest, " yet there are many more favored and more 
fortunate. Were these gods good for anything, they 
would help their worshippers." Then, leaping on 
horseback, he hurled a spear into the sacred temple 
at Godmanham, and with the rest of the witan em- 
braced the religion of the king. 1 
its results. But hardly had the change been made, when its 
issues justified the king's long hesitation. Easily 
as it was brought about in Eadwine's court, the re- 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 13. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 257 

ligious revolution gave a shock to the power which chap. vi. 
he had built up in Britain at large. Though Pauli- The 
nus baptized among the Cheviots as on the Swale, brin su- 
it was only in Deira that the Northumbrians real- premacy - 
ly followed the bidding of their king. If Eadwine 617-659. 
reared anew a church at York, no church, no altar, 
rose in Bernicia from the Forth to the Tees. 1 Nor 
was the new faith more fortunate in the subject 
kingdoms. Lindsey, indeed, hearkened to the preach- 
ing of Paulinus, 2 and Rsedwald's son, Eorpwald of 
East Anglia, bent to baptism soon after the conver- 
sion of Eadwine. 3 But even here the faith of Wo- 
den and Thunder was not to fall without a struggle. 
Eorpwald was at once slain by a pagan thegn ; and 
his people returned to their old heathendom. Such 
a rejection of the faith of their overlord marks, no 
doubt, a throwing -off of Eadwine's supremacy by 
the men of East Anglia ; and thus prepares us for 
the revolution which must have taken place at the 
same moment "throughout the valley of the Trent, 
and, above all, among the West Engle, or Mercians. 

Till now the Mercians had in no wise been dis- The 
tinguished from the other Engie tribes. Their sta- J 
tion, indeed, on the Welsh border had invited them 
to widen their possessions by conquest while the 
rest of the Anglian peoples of Mid-Britain were shut 
off from any chance of expansion ; and this frontier 
position must have kept their warlike energy at 
its height. But nothing had yet shown in them a 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 2. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 16. 

3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15. For the date of Eorpwald 's baptism, 
see Hussey's note in his Baeda, p. 105. 

17 



258 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. power which could match even that of the Engle 
The on the eastern coast. It was only at the close of 
briansu- the sixth century, indeed, that the settlers along the 
premacy. marcn had drawn together into a kingdom ; and the 
617-659. bounds of the Kentish and East-Anglian overlord- 
ships show that the two earliest Mercian kings, 
Crida and Wibba, must have owned the supremacy 
of ^Ethelberht, and bowed beneath the supremacy 
of Rsedwald. When East Anglia fell from her pride 
of place into subjection to Eadwine, we can hardly 
doubt that a third king, Cearl, who seems to have 
seized the throne in spite of the claims of Wibba's 
son, Penda, submitted with small reluctance to an 
overlord who had wedded his daughter while in ex- 
ile at his court. But Quaenburg and Cearl had alike 
passed away; and at this moment the old relations 
of friendship between Northumbria and these West- 
ern Engle were changed into an attitude of mutual 
hostility by the accession of Penda. 
Penda. It was in 626, on the very eve of Eadwine's con- 
version, that Penda, the son of Wibba, became king 
of the Mercians. 1 Penda was already a man fifty 
years old, and famous for the daring of his raids 
on the neighbors of his people during the years of 
his exclusion from the throne. 2 He seems to have 
seized the kingship at last after a violent struggle, 
in which the sympathies, if not the actual aid, of the 
Northumbrian overlord must, from his ties of kin- 



1 Malmesbury, Gesta Regum, i. 74. According to Henry of Hun- 
tingdon, Crida was the first Mercian king. On his death, in 600, he 
was followed by Wibba for ten years to 610; then by Cearl from 
610 to 626 ; then by Wibba's son, Penda. 

8 Ibid. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



259 



dred, have been with Cearl and his house. With charvl 
Penda's success, therefore, Eadwine saw himself me 
fronted by a formidable foe in the upper Trent val- b riansu- 
ley. But, vigorous as the new Mercian king was, P remac y- 
we can hardly doubt that it was not so much his 617-659. 
vigor as the conversion of Eadwine which shook 
the Northumbrian power over Mid-Britain, and en- 
abled Penda at once to seize the supremacy over 
its Engle peoples. His efforts would, no doubt, be 
aided by the tendency of these peoples themselves 
to fall back on their older grouping in the days of 
Raedwald, if not of yEthelberht, and by their prefer- 
ence of a South-Humbrian to a North-Humbrian 
overlord. But whatever was the cause of his suc- 
cess, he must have already asserted his superiority 
over the English tribes about him before he could 
have ventured to attack the West Saxons as he at- 
tacked them only two years after his accession, in 
628. 1 The strife, however, of the West-Saxon tribes 
among themselves, as well as the terrible overthrow 
they had lately suffered at the hands of Eadwine, fa- 
vored their assailant; and their defeat at Cirences- 
ter seems to have been a decisive one. The local- 
ity of the battle, in the territory not of the original 
West-Saxon kingdom, but of the Hwiccas, who, as 
we have seen, still remained as late as yEthelberht's 
days a separate people from their fellow-Gewissas, 
may perhaps explain Penda's success, if, like the 
Britons at Wodensbury, he fought as an ally of the 
Hwiccas against Cynegils and Cwichelm. The strife, 
in any case, ended in a formal treaty, 2 whose provi- 

1 E. Chron. a. 628. 

2 And gethingodan J>a (E. Chron. a. 628). 



2 6o THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. sions we may perhaps guess from what we find soon 
The after to be the bounds of the Mercian rule. In the 
briansu- days of Penda's son, Wulfhere, the whole territory 
premaey. f t j ie Hwiccas had become part of the Mercian 
617-659. realm ; and there is no recorded event by which 

we can account for this great change of boundaries 

save the battle of Cirencester. 
Pendaand Such a triumph at once changed the political as- 

Eadwine. . !r 

pect of Britain. Not only had Mercia risen to su- 
premacy over the valley of the Trent, but her con- 
quest had carried her dominion to the mouth of the 
Severn and added to her realm our Worcestershire, 
our Gloucestershire, and our Herefordshire. The 
West Saxons, stripped of Ceawlin's winnings, not 
only shrank into a lesser power, but necessarily 
passed from their subjection under Eadwine to a 
virtual submission to Penda. The Northumbrian 
king was, in fact, thrown suddenly back across the 
Humber ; and the work of his earlier years was un- 
done at a blow. But Eadwine was far from relin- 
quishing his aims. The religion he had embraced 
was used to restore his shaken power; and a Bur- 
gundian bishop, Felix, was sent by his brother-in- 
law, the Kentish king, to again attempt the conver- 
sion of the East Angles. 1 Eadwine, however, had a 
stronger arrow in his quiver. Another son of Rsed- 
wald, Sigeberht, had been driven under Eorpwald 
from East Anglia, and had taken refuge among the 
Franks over-sea. There he had become a Christian ; 
and Eadwine was thus enabled to bring a Christian 
king of their own stock to the East Anglians in 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 6l 

63 1. 1 The reception of Sigeberht involved a fresh charvi. 
reception of Christianity, and, doubtless, the over- The 

. ,.,,-r 1 !• •!• t> ,1 • • Northum- 

lordship of Northumbria with it. But the winning briansu- 
of East Anglia made a war with Penda inevitable. P rem ^°y- 
East Engle and West Engle had, in fact, to settle ew-effc 
which should be supreme over their fellow-peoples 
about them, and around which should be built up 
the great Engle State of Mid-Britain. And beyond 
this strife lay the greater struggle which was to de- 
cide whether the Engle of Mid-Britain could hold 
their own against the Engle of the north. 

In such a strife the odds were heavy against Penda and 

the Welsh. 

Penda, had he waited to encounter the hosts of East 
Anglia and of Northumbria at once. To crush the 
northern State, and then deal singly with his rival 
in Mid-Britain, was his obvious policy, and accounts 
for his choosing the part of assailant in the coming 
struggle. But even single-handed Northumbria was 
more than his match, and he could hardly have 
ventured on an attack on Eadwine had he not found 
aid in the people which had till now been the special 
enemies of his own border -folk. Cadwallon, the 
Welsh king of Gwynedd, may have seen in Ead- 
wine's difficulties a chance of avenging his race for 
the conquest of Elmet, as well as of winning back 
the country which ^thelfrith had reft away; and 
it was with Cadwallon that Penda leagued himself 
against their common foe. The absolute severance 
between conquerors and conquered, which had played 
so great a part in the events of the last two hundred 
years, was, as we have seen, fast breaking down. 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15. 



262 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. The union of Britons with the Hwiccas in their at- 
The tack on Ceawlin, the home which the House of ^lla 
Snsu-" found among the Welsh of Elmet, as well as the 
premacy. n0 me which the House of ./Ethelfrith found among 
617-659. the Picts, were indications that the Britons would 
henceforth look for help in their struggle to divi- 
sions among the Englishmen themselves, and that 
Englishmen, in their turn, were willing to seek Brit- 
ish aid against their countrymen. Penda boldly 
recognized this fact as an element in English poli- 
tics, when his host marched with the host of Cad- 
wallon to attack the Northumbrian king. 1 
Battle of The district in which Eadwine took post to meet 
Penda's attack was on the northernmost skirt of 
that vast tract of fen-land which formed a natural 
barrier for Northumbria against any assailant from 
Mid-Britain. Even the Roman engineers failed to 
carry a causeway directly from the south across the 
marshes of the Trent ; and the traveller on his way 
to Eburacum was forced to make a circuit from 
Leicester to Lincoln, and to cross the fen, perhaps 
by a ferry, in the neighborhood of Gainsborough, 
ere he could reach a firmer road at Bawtrey, and 
strike directly for the north. But even this firmer 
road was little more than a strip of ground hard 
pressed between forest and fen ; for on one side, as 
we have seen, it was closely bordered by the oak- 
woods of Elmet, while on the other the fen stretched 
onward without a break from the course of the Trent 
to the lower channels of the Don, the Aire, the Der- 
went, and the Ouse. And not only was this gate- 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



263 



way into the Northumbrian territory a narrow one, chap^vi. 
but it had from very ancient times been barred by The 
strong defences. The British tribe of the Brigantes b rian su- 
had drawn across this strip of land, behind the upper premacy - 
course of the Don, so strong a line of intrenchments 617 - 659 - 
that they seem to have held, for a time, even the 
Romans in check ; and this work, which may still 
be traced after the waste of a thousand years, would, 
if manned by the soldiers of Eadwine, have been too 
formidable a barrier for Penda to face. To right or 
left, however, advance was scarcely less difficult ; for 
it would have been hard to force a way through the 
southern fastnesses of Elmet, and it seemed even 
harder to find a road through the skirts of the fen 
which stretched away to the east. It was into the 
fen, however, that Penda plunged. Its wide reaches 
of mere marsh and broad pools of water swarming 
with eels were broken by lifts of slightly higher 
ground, covered by turf which rose and fell (so ran 
the popular belief) with the rise and fall of the rivers 
that ran through the district, and whose soil was so 
soft that it was easy to thrust a pole through it into 
the waters beneath. The rises, however, were firm 
enough to afford covert for vast herds of deer, 1 and it 
was from one such rise to another that the Mercian 
army must have made its way along the fen-tracks 
that threaded this desolate region. Hatfield, or the 
Heathfield, was one of the northernmost of these 



1 In 1609, Prince Henry slew five hundred deer in a single day's 
hunting here ; and before the draining of these fens in the Civil 
Wars deer were said to be as plentiful in Hatfield Chase as " sheep 
upon a hill." Smiles, in his Lives of the Engineers (Brindley and 
Early Engineers, chap, ii.), gives an account of this drainage. 



264 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. reaches of soppy moor ; it lay, in fact, just south of 
The the Don ; and Eadwine, crossing that river by the 
?3an sn" paved ford which has left its mark on the name of 
premacy. Stainford, may have hoped by the seizure of this po- 
617-659. sition to crush his assailant as he struggled through 
the pools and moor-paths of the fen. It was here, 
at any rate, somewhere near the present town of 
Hatfield, that the two armies met ; but in the fight 
which followed the Deiran king was defeated and 
slain. 1 
its results. Eadwine's overthrow proved the ruin of his house. 
Of his elder sons by the Mercian Quasnburg, one 
fell on the field, and another took refuge with Penda ; 
while his wife /Ethelburh fled with her own two 
younger children to her brother in Kent. 2 With 
her fled Paulinus, for the battle was at once followed 
by a revival of the old heathendom ; and Osric, a son 
of Ella's brother ^Elfric, who mounted the throne 
on Eadwine's fall, threw off Christianity and set up 
again the faith of Woden. 3 But Osric reigned over 
Deira alone ; for the Englishmen of Bernicia seized 
on the defeat to break up the Northumbrian realm 
by throwing off the overlordship of their southern 
neighbors. They recalled the House of Ida; and 
Eanfrith, a son of /Etherfrith, returned from his ref- 
uge among the Picts to be welcomed as their king. 
Bernicia, as we saw, had never received the faith of 
Eadwine; and Eanfrith, though he had become a 
Christian at Hh, no sooner found himself among 
his people than, like Osric, he threw off the faith of 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. E. Chron. a. 633. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 1. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



265 



Christ. The reigns of the two kings lasted one mis- chap, vi. 
erable year — a year whose shame was never forgotten The 
among the Englishmen of the north. Penda, in- briansu- 
deed, showed no inclination to follow up his victory premacy - 
by any attack on Northumbria; he even gave shel- 617-659. 
ter to one of Eadwine's sons, when he was driven 
out, after some vain struggle perhaps with Osric for 
the Deiran throne. 1 His aim was to complete his 
dominion over Mid-Britain ; he had, in fact, fought 
with Eadwine only to isolate East Anglia; and it 
was East Anglia that he attacked in the year after 
the battle at Hatfield, in 634. Before the threat of 
his attack, King Sigeberht had withdrawn from his 
throne to a monastery. His people dragged him 
back, however, from his cell as Penda approached, 
in faith that his presence would bring them the fa-' 
vor of Heaven; but though the monk-king was set in 
the forefront of the host, he would bear no weapon 
save a wand ; and his fall was followed by the rout 
of his army and the submission of his kingdom. 2 It 
remained Christian, indeed ; for his brother Anna, 
who followed him on the throne, was as zealous for 
the faith as Sigeberht ; but Anna only reigned as 
an under-king, and East Anglia became part of the 
overlordship of Penda. 

If Penda had withdrawn, however, Cadwallon re- Battle of 
mained harrying in the heart of Deira, and made Hevenfdd. 
himself master even of York. 3 Osric fell in an at- 
tempt to recover the town ; and even the. Bernician 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 18, 19. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 1. I take the "oppido municipio" here to 
be York. 



2 66 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, vi. Eanfrith, while suing for peace, was murdered by the 
The British king. But the triumph of the Britons was 

Northum- . p l 

brian su- as brief as it was strange. Oswald, a second son of 
premacy. ^^^ tHelf ritH , left Hii, on his brother's death, to place 
617-659. hfj^ggjf a t the head of his race ; and in 635 a small 
force gathered round the new king near the Roman 
Wall. 1 . The host of the Bernicians was heathen, as 
of old, and of Oswald's force none were Christians 
save twelve nobles who had followed him from Hii, 
and who, like himself, had been converted during 
their exile. But Oswald had no mind to cast away 
his faith like his brother Eanfrith. On the night 
before the battle, a dream came to his aid. He saw 
the tall form of the founder of Hii, Columba, shroud- 
ing with its mantle almost the whole English camp, 
while his mighty voice bade the king " Be strong, 
and do like a man; lo ! I am with thee." 2 As Os- 
wald woke he gathered his witan to tell them the 
vision ; and with the quick enthusiasm of a moment 
of peril the whole host pledged itself to become 
Christian if it conquered in the fight. Obedient to 
the counsel Columba had given him in his dream, 
the king stole out from his camp on the following 
night, and fell with the dawn on the host of Cad- 
wallon. Legend told how Oswald set up a cross of 
wood as his standard ere the fight began, 3 holding 
it with his own hands till the hollow in which it 
was fixed was filled by his soldiers, and how then, 
throwing himself on his knees, the king cried to his 
host to pray to the living God. They rose to fall 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 2. 

2 Adamnan, Life of Columba, ed. Reeves, pp. 14-16. 

3 This cross was still standing in Baeda's time (Hist. Eccl. iii. 2). 




Stanford's Geograph* CetaJ? f 



2 68 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

charvi. upon the Britons. The surprise seems to have been 
The complete. The Welsh were cut to pieces. Cad- 
brian su- wallon fell fighting on the " Heaven's field," as after- 
premacy. times ca n ec r t h e field of battle ; and the fall of this 
617-659. i as t great hero of the British race left the Enq-lish- 

men of Bernicia supreme in the north. 1 
its results. The victory of the Heaven-field, indeed, is memor- 
able as the close of the last rally which the Britons 
ever made against their conquerors. Through more 
than fifty years, from the battle of Faddiley to the 
fall of Cadwallon, they had seemed at last strong 
enough to turn the tide of victory. In the south 
they had struck down Ceawlin and penetrated to 
the very heart of Wessex. In Central Britain they 
had long held the Mercians at bay even along the 
weak frontier of the water-shed of the Trent. Even 
in the north, though their strongest combination had 
been crushed at Daegsastan, and their line fatally 
broken by the overthrow of Chester, they had at 
last succeeded in defeating Eadwine, in breaking up 
the realm of Northumbria, and in encamping as vic- 
tors for a whole year on its soil. But with the bat- 
tle of the Heaven-field this rally came to an end. 
The strength of the Welsh was exhausted ; and 
henceforth their work was simply a long struggle of 
self-defence. To England the battle was of even 
larger import. It restored in great part the political 
work of Eadwine ; for Deira submitted to /Ethelric's 
grandson as it had submitted to ^Ethelric, and the 
Northumbrian kingdom found itself restored in the 
firm hands of Oswald. 2 But it did more than restore 

1 E. Chron. a. 635 ; Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 1. 

2 As a son of Eadwine's sister, Acha, Oswald partly shared the 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 6o 

his religious work. The conversion of the Berni- chap. vr. 
cians gave Northumbria a religious unity such as it The 
had never known till now, and with this unity Chris- brlan su" 
tianity rose to a yet more vigorous life. It came, in- premacy - 
deed, in a different form from the Christianity of 617-659. 
Eadwine ; for it was not the Church of Paulinus 
which had nerved Oswald to his struggle for the 
cross, or which carried out in Bernicia the work of 
Christianization which his victory began. Paulinus, 
as we have seen, had fled southward at Eadwine's 
fall ; and the Roman Church, though safely estab- 
lished in Kent, ceased to struggle elsewhere against 
the heathen reaction. From that moment its place 
in the conversion of Northern England was taken by 
missionaries from a land which was henceforth to 
play a part in English history. 

A Roman general, Agricola, as he gazed from the Ireland. 
western coast of Britain across the channel which 
parted the two countries, had planned, as the last 
of his exploits, the conquest of Ireland. But the 
threat of Roman invasion was never carried out; 
and no foreign influence disturbed, till a far later 
time, the social and political development of the Irish 
people. In this way the tribal life which the Celts 
had brought with them from the plains of Asia went 
on in Ireland as it went on nowhere else in the West- 
ern world. Two of the great physical agents, indeed, 
which brought about its modification elsewhere were 
wanting, or all but wanting, there. In other lands 
mountain-ranges, great river-valleys, a varied distri- 
bution of hill and plain, tended to throw smaller 

royal blood of Deira, and would thus be more acceptable to the 
Deirans than his father. 



2 j THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, vi. tribes together into peoples and nations, and to form 
The from their union a corporate organization which 
brianX- widened and elevated the sphere of human life and 
premacy. } luman action. Within the tribe itself, on the other 
617-659. hand, an increase in the culture of grain, above all in 
the culture of wheat, did much to fix what had been 
a mere mass of wandering herdsmen to particular 
spots, to make land rather than kinship the basis of 
society, to turn the sept into a village community, 
and thus to create new and higher types of social 
and domestic life. But the form and climate of Ire- 
land offered almost insuperable obstacles to the full 
development of either of these processes of social 
growth. Ireland was an immense plain, set indeed 
within a hilly coast-line, and broken by the course of 
the Shannon, by some lakes in the north, and by 
wide tracts of bog-land in the centre, but presenting 
over a vast area few of those natural features which 
could isolate one group of tribes from another. On 
the other hand, its moist climate and ceaseless rain 
made wheat-culture uncertain and profitless, while it 
spread before the herdsman the greenest and most 
tempting of pasture-lands. Throughout its history, 
therefore, the island remained a huge grazing-ground. 
The most famous of the older Irish tales is the story 
of a cattle-raid ; to drive off kine, indeed, was the 
main aim of the forays of tribe upon tribe. In Irish 
law, fines, dues, rents, were all paid in livestock, and 
generally in kine. Cattle were, in fact, to a very late 
time, the chief Irish medium of exchange; and even 
at the opening of the sixteenth century we find an 
Earl of Kildare paying twenty cows as the price of 
a book. It was by taking a grant, not as elsewhere 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 yj 

of land, but of cattle, that the free tribesman became chap.vi. 
the man or vassal of an Irish chief. In all of this The 
we have, no doubt, indications of a system of property Ensu- 
which was common at some time of their history to P rema °y- 
every Aryan nation. The peculiarity of Ireland lay 617-659. 
in the preservation of such a social state when it had 
passed away elsewhere ; and this preservation sprang 
from the nature of its climate and its soil. 

How primitive were the social institutions of the itsinstitu- 
country may be seen from the character of its family 
life. Of polygamy, indeed, in households held to- 
gether by the despotic power of the father, such as 
existed among the Celts in Gaul, we hear nothing 
among the Celts in Ireland. But temporary cohab- 
itation remained even to the sixteenth century a 
recognized social usage, though, no doubt, an excep- 
tional one ; while provision was made for the legiti- 
mization, not only of bastards, but of a wife's children 
by other fathers than her husband. It was from 
usages such as these that domestic life rose through- 
out Europe to its later and more elevated forms ; 
but in Ireland the evolution was so slow as to re- 
main for centuries almost imperceptible. In the . 
same way, life remained wholly pastoral or agricult- 
ural. Among the native tribes no approach was 
made to collective life in towns. Though the Irish 
village system differed little in form from the system 
which was a general heritage of the Aryan race, and 
which we have seen prevailing among our English 
forefathers, it remained based more on community 
of kindred than on community of land. Political life 
showed the same slowness of advance as social life. 
In the earlier Aryan community, the chief seems to 



2 j 2 THE MAKING" OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. have been at once ruler, priest, and judge. In Ire- 
The land, as in Gaul, he remained simply ruler, while the 
briansu" professional lawmen, or brehons, preserved and de- 
premacy. c i arec [ the mass of traditional customs which consti- 
617-659. tuted Irish law. The structure of the nation re- 
mained purely tribal to the last days of its indepen- 
dence. We see, indeed, a faint tendency to union 
which elsewhere would have brought about a real 
national life. Common ties of descent sometimes 
bound tribes in confederacies like those which gath- 
ered at an early date round a common king of 
Cashel ; sometimes weak tribes grouped themselves 
round stronger, such as the O'Neils or the O'Donels 
at a later date in the north. From time to time 
even the promise of a national sovereignty rose out 
of the chaos of political life ; but it never proved 
more than a promise. Traditional feeling owned 
the right to a general overlordship as existing in de- 
scendants of the House of Nial ; legal theory gave 
this King of Ireland a king's seat at Tara, assigned 
to him Meath as his special domain, and asserted his 
right to receive tributes of cattle from lower chief- 
- tains. But, strong as was the hold of this tradition, 
the supremacy of the King of Meath never became 
a lasting or effective force in Irish history. 
Their slow The result of this peculiar temper of the Irish 

d£U£loi) ~ 

ment. people was fated to be seen long ages after the time 
we have reached in the violent contrast which Ire- 
land presented with other countries of the Western 
world. To the Europe of the twelfth or the six- 
teenth century the island appeared simply a country 
of uncivilized barbarians. But neither in Irish poli- 
tics nor in Irish society was there anything radically 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



273 



different from the political and social organization chap.vi. 
which we find in the early stages of other European The 
communities. What distinguished Ireland from briansu- 
other nations was the slowness of its development premacy ' 
as compared with theirs. Usages which elsewhere 617-659. 
marked a remote antiquity lingered on here into his- 
toric time. The brehon of the thirteenth century 
defined the law which applied to the bastard child 
of a married woman as minutely as his predecessor 
had done in the fifth. Though private possession 
slowly made its way, the system of common posses- 
sion lasted up to the age of the Tudors as the main 
social feature of the country, and then was only vio- 
lently put an end to by the English lawyers. Law 
went on in a customary form with little or no ten- 
dency to take statutory shape. The system of justice 
never advanced from the blood-fine, which was origi- 
nally common in all early races, to any general juris- 
diction of the tribe. Submission, indeed, even to the 
blood-fine, as to any form of judicial interposition, 
remained voluntary to the last among Irish dispu- 
tants ; and it was only by a complicated system of 
distress that they could be forced within the pale of 
the law. It was the same, as we have seen, with po- 
litical life. In no tribe did any principle of real co- 
hesion develop itself which could serve as the ground- 
work of national union. As in other lands, the chief 
increased in power as time went on by the creation 
of a class of vassals out of free tribesmen who sought 
or were forced to take grants of cattle, as well as 
from the settlement of refugees from one tribe with- 
in the boundaries of another. But to the last the 
power of the Irish chieftains remained as weak for 

18 



2 ja THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. any real purposes of government as it was effective 

The for purposes of oppression. 1 
brian su- At the time when the first Englishmen invaded 
premacy. Britain, the Scots, as the people of Ireland were then 
617-659. called, were among the most formidable assailants 
Patrick, of the island. In the raids of their pirate fleets on 
its shores or on those of Gaul, thousands of the 
wretched provincials were swept off into slavery. 
Among these captives was a boy whose work was 
destined to leave a deep mark on the history and 
character of the wild tribesmen who carried him 
from his native land. At the time of his capture, 
Patricius, or, as the more modern form of his name 
runs, Patrick, 2 was nearly sixteen years old ; and for 
ten more years he remained in Ireland as a slave. 
The years were years of conversion to a deeper sense 
of heavenly things. As he tended his master's kine, 
the young herdsman would often rise before daylight 
to pray in woods and mountain, even amidst frost 
and snow ; " and I felt no ill," he says, " nor was there 
any sloth within me, because, as I see now, the spirit 
was burning in me." 3 At last a dream raised in him 
the longing for freedom ; he fled from his master's 
hand ; and after hard wanderings found himself at 
home again. But, years later, he was driven to re- 
turn to the land of his slavery. " In dead of night," 
he writes, " I saw a man coming to me as if from 
Ireland, whose name was Victorinus, and who bore 

1 For the social condition of Ireland in these early times, see Sir 
Henry Maine's Early History of Institutions. 

2 For a full criticism of the materials for Patrick's life, see Dr. 
Todd's St. Patrick. 

3 Confessio S. Patricii, ap. S. Patricii Opuscula, ed. Villanueva 
(Dublin, 1835), p. 190. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 yc 

countless letters. And he gave me one of them, and CHAP - vl 
I read the beginning of it, which contained the words The 
k The voice of the Irish.' And while I was repeat- brian su- 
ing the words of this beginning, I thought I heard premacy ' 
the voice of those who were near the wood Foclut, 617-659, 
which is nigh to the western sea ; and they cried 
thus : ' We pray thee, holy youth, to come and live 
among us henceforth.' And I was greatly pricked 
in heart, and could read no more." l 

Patrick woke to obey the words of his dream. Conversion 
He was ordained priest and bishop, and again land-" iea " ' 
ed on the shores of Ireland. But from the moment 
of his landing his life is lost in clouds of poetic leg- 
end. His work, however, was manfully done. By 
him or by his followers the island was quickly won 
for the faith of Christ : chieftains were converted, 
schools, churches, and monasteries were set up in 
every quarter. But the form which the new com- 
munion took was widely different from that which 
it took in other countries of the West. Elsewhere 
Christianity had been, above all, the religion of the 
Roman Empire. As it mastered the Roman prov- 
inces, its organization moulded itself on the organi- 
zation of the State. The administrative divisions of 
the one became the ecclesiastical divisions of the 
other. The prefect and vicar of the Empire were re- 
flected in the archbishop and bishop of the Church. 
The town with its dependent tract of country be- 
came the diocese. The law-court was often turned 
into the church. Christianity was localized, organized, 
with officers, law, and discipline of its own, working 

1 Confessio S. Patricii, ibid. p. 194. 



276 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. side by side with and in fixed relation to the civil 
The organization of the empire which adopted it. But 

briansu" in Ireland it found a very different sphere of action. 

premacy. i re } anc j had never formed a part of the Empire ; and, 

617-659. instead of the centralized system of Imperial gov- 
ernment, the missionaries found there, as we have 
seen, a mass of tribes linked together only by force 
or a vague tradition into varying groups around a 
central king; chieftains whose authority was per- 
sonal over their clansmen rather than territorial 
over any definite tract of country ; a land without 
towns or centres of civil judicature, or more than a 
crude though minute system of traditional law. 

Character Little as we know of the first Christian mission- 

oj the Irish 

church, aries in Ireland, we see from its results that their 
work moulded itself with a curious fidelity on the 
social forms which the island offered. 1 The conver- 
sion of every chieftain was followed by the adhesion 
of his tribe, and a tribal character was given from 
the outset to the nascent Church. The monastic 
impulse which was becoming dominant in the Chris- 
tian world at the time told nowhere with ofreater 
force. The Irish churches took a monastic form; 
and the helpers and successors of Patrick became 
from the first abbots, each of them surrounded by a 
community of monks. But these monastic bodies 
were only centres of a tribal organization. In other 
countries of the West, endowments of land fell to the 
local churches as they fell to guilds and voluntary 
civil societies of a similar class, and these endow- 
ments set them in the same rank of local corpora- 

1 Todd, Life of St. Patrick, Introd. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 -- 

tions. In Ireland the grants given to the new mon- chap.vi. 
asteries and their superiors raised the abbot into The 
the head of an artificial clan. He and his successors bSnsu- 
were not only heads of the spiritual community P remac y- 
which gathered around them and was supported by 617-659. 
these endowments, but chiefs of the new family in 
its civil capacity, and its bishops in a more spiritual 
aspect. As these ecclesiastical clans grew larger 
and more numerous, their form modified itself, but 
still in the same peculiar way. Sometimes the suc- 
cessors of the original abbot divided his lay and 
spiritual authority. In such a case the community 
owned both a religious and a secular head. The 
spiritual coarb, or heir, as the abbot was significantly 
called, was chosen by the monks over whom he pre- 
sided, and the secular coarb by the tribesmen at 
large ; though in both instances custom tended to 
restrict the choice to the family of the original 
founder. The office of bishop, too, generally detached 
itself from that of abbot and sank into a subordinate 
position. Without defined diocese or territorial po- 
sition, the Irish bishops were at last distinguished 
from the rest of the clergy by no other marks than 
their possession of the strictly spiritual powers of 
consecration. Their number was enormous. Patrick 
was said to have consecrated more than three hun- 
dred, and a few centuries later they were believed 
to have reached seven hundred. As they had neither 
settled dioceses nor settled endowments, their life 
was one of poverty and lowliness. A bishop might 
be found ploughing his own field by his own church. 
Another might be seen wandering with a pet cow 
at his heels through the country, without support 



2 «g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. save from the fees he charged for ordination. On 

The the other hand, abbots of great monasteries like r 
bSan su- those of Durrow or Clonmacnois ranked among the , 
premacy. g rea t powers of the land. Kings quailed before their 
617-659. spiritual threats ; the} 7 formed political combinations, 

and at need led kinsfolk or tribesmen to the field. 
character While other churches of Western Christendom 
christian- were organized on a national and episcopal basis, the 
tty ' Irish Church was thus at once tribal and monastic. 
Nor was it less different from them in character than 
in form. In its temper as in its organization it was 
purely Celtic. The work of its conversion was hard- 
ly over when the conquest of Britain by the English 
cut off Ireland from the Western world, and hindered 
the new community of religion from bringing it into 
contact with the general temper of European civil- 
ization. Save the little group of its first mission- 
aries, even its earliest preachers were pure Irishmen, 
and the Church they founded grew up purely Irish 
in spirit as in form. The Celtic passion, like the 
Celtic anarchy, stamped itself on Irish religion. 
There was something strangely picturesque in its 
asceticism, in its terrible penances, its life-long fasts, 
its sudden contrasts of wrath and pity, the sweet- 
ness and tenderness of its legends and hymns, the 
awful vindictiveness of its curses. But, in good as 
in ill, its type of moral conduct was utterly unlike 
that which Christianity elsewhere developed. It 
was wanting in moral earnestness, in the sense of 
human dignity, in self-command; it showed little 
power over the passions of anger and revenge; it 
recognized spiritual excellence in a rigid abstinence 
from sensual excess and the repetition of countless 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



279 



hymns and countless litanies. »But, on the other chap.vi. 
hand, Ireland gave to Christianity a force, a pas- The 
sionateness, a restless energy, such as it had never brTan su-" 
known before. It threw around it something of the premacy - 
grace, the witchery, the romance of the Irish tern- 617-659. 
per. It colored even its tenderness with the peculiar 
pathos of the Celt. 

The extravagance of the Irish saint -legends is Its poetry. 
broken everywhere by gleams of a delicate evanes- 
cent poetry. When the host of King Loegaire closes 
round Patrick to kill him and his comrades, the eight 
missionaries vanish with the boy who followed them, 
and the host sees but eight roe-deer and a fawn trip- 
ping away to pasture. At another time two of the 
king's daughters, Fedelm the Red and Ethne the 
White, come down to a river-side to wash, after the 
manner of women, and find there the group of wan- 
dering preachers. 1 " They knew not whence they 
came nor from what people, but took them for fairy- 
folk of the hills or earth, gods or phantoms." Patrick 
taught them his faith and baptized them ; but his 
words woke a strange longing in the girls' hearts, 
and they asked to see the face of Christ. " And 
Patrick said, ' Ye cannot see the face of Christ save 
ye taste of death and take the sacrifice of the Lord.' 
Then they bade him give it them. And they re- 
ceived God's eucharist, and slept in death ; and they 
were laid out both in one bed covered with their 
garments, and men made great dole and weeping 
over them." It is this peculiar tenderness that gives 
its charm to the love of living things that colors the 

1 Extract from Book of Armagh, in Todd's St. Patrick, p. 452. 



2 g THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. legends of Celtic saints. The Irish hermit talks with 
The the sea-birds which scream round his strip of sand- 
briansu- bank. Columba sits watching his reapers in the field, 
premacy. anc | caressing the head which a horse that had been 
617-659. feeding hard by comes to thrust into his lap. 1 The 
legend of Patrick linked an instance of his charity 
to animals with the foundation of Armagh. When 
he came to the spot he had chosen for his settle- 
ment, he found a roe with her fawn lying in the 
place where the altar of his church was afterwards 
to stand. His followers would have slain them," but 
Patrick would not." He took up the fawn himself, 
carrying it on his shoulder; and the roe followed 
him like a pet lamb till he had laid down her fawn 
in another field. 
Irish mis- it was this strange Christianity, strange alike in 
temper and in form, which began in the seventh 
century to leaven in a hundred different ways the 
Christianity of the West. When it burst upon West- 
ern Christendom, it brought with it an enthusiasm, 
an energy, a learning, greater than any that it found 
there. For while in Italy or Gaul or Spain Chris- 
tianity had spent its vigor in a struggle for self- 
preservation against the heathen invaders — in win- 
ning them to its creed, in taming them by its disci- 
pline, in bringing to bear on them the civilization 
which it had alone preserved through the storm of 
conquest — Ireland, unscourged by assailants, drew 
from its conversion a life and movement such as it 
has never known since. The science and Biblical 
knowledge which fled from the Continent took refuge 

1 Adamnan, Life of Columba, ed. Reeves, p. 231. 



sions. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 2 gj 

in famous schools which made Durrow and Armagh CHAP - vt. 
universities of the West. The new Christian life The 
soon beat too strongly to brook confinement within brTanSu- 
the bounds of Ireland itself. Patrick had not been premacy - 
a century dead when Irish Christianity flung itself 617-659. 
with a fiery zeal into battle with the mass of heathen- 
ism which was rolling in elsewhere upon the Chris- 
tian world. Irish missionaries labored among- the 
Picts of the Highlands and among the Frisians of 
the northern seas. An Irish missionary, Columban, 
founded monasteries in Burgundy and the Apen- 
nines. The canton of St. Gall still commemorates 
in its name another Irish missionary before whom 
the spirits of flood and fell fled wailing over the 
waters of the Lake of Constance. For a time it 
seemed as if the course of the world's history was 
to be changed; as if the older Celtic race that Ro- 
man and German had driven before them had 
turned to the moral conquest of their conquerors ; 
as if Celtic, and not Latin, Christianity was to mould 
the destinies of the churches of the West. 

On a low island of barren gneiss rock off the west irhkmis- 
coast of Scotland the Irishman Colum or Columba in North- 
set up a mission station for the Picts at Hii ; x and it 
was within the walls of this monastery that Oswald, 
with his brothers, had found refuge on their father's 
fall. 2 As soon as he was master of Northumbria, 
he naturally called for missionaries from among its 
monks. The first preacher sent in answer to his 
call obtained small success : he declared, indeed, on 
his return, that among a people so stubborn and 

1 Adamnan, Life of Columba, ed. Reeves, p. 434. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 3. 



2 g 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. barbarous as these Northumbrian folk success was 
The impossible. " Was it their stubbornness, or your 
brian su- harshness ?" asked Aidan, a brother sitting by ; " did 
premacy. y 0U f or get God's word to give them the milk first and 
617-659. then the meat?" 1 All eyes turned on the speaker 
as fittest to undertake the abandoned mission, and 
Aidan, sailing at their bidding, fixed his bishop's stool 
or see in 635 on the coast of Northumbria, in the 
island -peninsula of Lindisfarne. 2 Thence, from a 
monastery which gave to the spot its after-name of 
Holy Island, preachers poured forth over the heathen 
realm. Boisil guided a little troop of missionaries to 
the valley of the Tweed. Aidan himself wandered 
on foot, preaching among the peasants of Bernicia. 
In his own court the king acted as interpreter to 
the Irish missionaries in their efforts to convert his 
thegns. 3 A new conception of kingship, indeed, be- 
gan to blend itself with that of the warlike glory of 
^Ethelfrith or the wise administration of Eadwine, 
and the moral power which was to reach its height 
in /Elfred first dawns in the story of Oswald. For 
after-times, the memory of Oswald's greatness was 
lost in the memory of his piety. " By reason of his 
constant habit of praying or giving thanks to the 
Lord, he was wont wherever he sat to hold his hands 
upturned on his knees." 4 As he feasted with Bishop 
Aidan by his side, the thegn whom he had set to 
give alms to the poor at his gate told him of a mul- 
titude that waited fasting without. The king at 
once bade the untasted meat be carried to the poor, 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 5. The name in Irish form is Aedhan. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 3. 3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 3. 

4 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 12. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



283 



and his silver dish be divided piecemeal among them, chap. vi. 
Aidan seized the royal hand and blessed it. " May The 
this hand," he cried, " never grow old !" * brian&u- 

But if Oswald was a saint, he was none the less P rema °y- 
resolved to build up again a power such as that of 617-659. 
Eadwine. His earlier efforts to widen his dominion Oswald. 
seem to have been mainly in the northwest. Here 
his sway not only stretched over the Britons, who 
formed the mass of the population in the district 
between Chester and the Ribble, but it is probable 
that he was owned as overlord by the Welsh king- 
dom of Strathclyde ; for otherwise he could hardly 
have gone on to " receive into his lordship " 2 the 
Picts and the Dalriad Scots across the Forth. In 
Southern Britain his success seems to have been 
more checkered. It may be doubted whether Mercia 
or the tribes along the Trent yielded more than a 
nominal submission to him ; 3 but Penda must have 
shrunk for the while from any open struggle, for at 
the pressure of Oswald 4 he murdered Eadfrid, the 
second son of Eadwine by his Mercian wife Quaen- 
burg, who had for a while found refuge at his court. 
Kent, too, yielded to the same pressure, and drove 
Eadwine's children by /Ethelberga to a refuge in 
Gaul. 5 In these realms, however, Oswald could hard- 



1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 6. 

2 " Omnes nationes et provincias Brittanniae, quae in quatuor 
linguas, id est : Brittonum, Pictorum, Scottorum, et Anglorum, di~ 
visa? sunt, in ditione accepit" (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 6). 

3 Some submission there must have been, for Baeda says that 
Oswald " hisdem finibus regnum tenuit " as Eadwine, which he has 
carefully specified (Hist. Eccl. ii. 5). 

* Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. 
5 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. 



284 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. ly claim any direct overlordship, but elsewhere he 
The was able to restore the realm of Eadwine. His arms 
brian Su-" wrested an acknowledgment of subjection from the 
premacy. Lindiswara, after a struggle whose fierceness was 
617-659. shown by the bitter memory it left behind it among 
the conquered people. 1 East Anglia, which had re- 
mained Christian amidst the heathen reaction else- 
where, after the fall of Eadwine, seems still to have 
remained subject to Penda ; but in the south Oswald 
succeeded in effectually restoring the Northumbrian 
supremacy. The battle of Cirencester and the loss 
of the country of the Hwiccas had taught the West 
Saxons to look on Mercia as their most dangerous 
foe ; and they were ready to seek aid against it in 
recognizing the overlordship of Oswald. Here again 
the new religion served as a prelude to the North- 
umbrian advance. Immediately after the victory 
of the Hevenfeld, in 635, Wessex declared itself 
Christian. The work of a preacher, Birinus, who 
had penetrated from Gaul into Wessex, proved so 
effective that King Cynegils received baptism in 
Oswald's presence, and established with his assent a 
see for his people in the royal city of Dorchester on 
the Thames. 2 
■JuMaur ^ was ^ S supremacy over so wide a ring of sub- 
feid. ject peoples which seemed to lift Oswald out of the 
rank of kings. In him, even more than in Eadwine, 
men saw some faint likeness of the older emperors. 
Once, indeed, a writer from the land of the Picts, the 
abbot Adamnan of Hii, calls Oswald " Emperor of 
the whole of Britain." 3 But, great as he was, the 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. n. 2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 7. 

3 Adamnan's Life of Columba, ed. Reeves, p. 16. 




UtanfortT* O'eograph' EombF 



2 gg THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. doom of Oswald was fated to be that of Eadwine. 
The Though the conversion of Wessex had prisoned it 
brian Su- within the central districts of England, heathendom 
premacy. f 0U ght desperately for life. Penda remained its 
617-659. rallying -point; and the long reign of the Mercian 
king was, in fact, one continuous battle with the 
Cross. But so far as we can judge from his acts, 
Penda seems to have looked on the strife of religion 
in a purely political light. Christianity meant, in 
fact, either subjection to, or alliance with, Oswald ; 
and the Northumbrian supremacy was again threat- 
ening his dominion on almost every border when 
Penda resolved to break through the net which was 
closing round him. The point of conflict, as before, 
seems to have been the dominion over East Anglia. 
Its possession was as vital to Mid-Britain as it was to 
Northumbria, which needed it to link itself with its 
West- Saxon subjects in the south; and Oswald 
must have felt that he was challenging his rival to a 
decisive combat when he marched, in 642, to deliver 
the East Anglians from Penda. But his doom was 
that of Eadwine ; for he was overthrown and slain 
in a battle called the battle of the Maserfeld. 1 His 
last words showed how deeply the spirit of the new 
faith was telling on the temper of Englishmen. The 
last thought of every northern warrior as he fell had 
till now been a hope that kinsmen would avenge his 
death upon his slayers. The king's last words, as 
he saw himself girt about with bloodthirsty foes, 
passed into a proverb: "God have mercy on their 
souls, as Oswald said ere he fell." 2 His body was 

1 E. Chron. a. 642 ; Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 9. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 12. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



287 



mutilated and his limbs set on stakes by the brutal chap.vi. 
conqueror; 1 but legend told that, when all else of The 
Oswald had perished, the hand that Aidan had brTan s™." 
blessed still remained white and uncorrupted. 2 premacy - 

For a few years after his victory at the Maserfeld 617 ~ 659 - 
Penda stood supreme in Britain. Wessex must have Oswiu. 
been forced to own his supremacy; 3 for its king, 
Cenwealh, threw off the Christian faith and married 
Penda's sister. East Anglia and Central Britain re- 
mained under Mercian sway, while the Northum- 
brian realm was a third time broken up : for even 
the men of Deira seem to have bent their necks to 
Penda ; and Oswini, the son of Osric,whom they took 
for their king, in a rising on Oswald's fall, was a mere 
under-king of the Mercian overlord. 4 Bernicia alone 
refused to yield. Year by year Penda carried his 
ravages over the north; once he reached even the 
royal city, the impregnable rock -fortress of Bam- 
borough. Despairing of success in an assault, he 
pulled down the cottages around, and, piling their 
wood against its walls, fired the mass in a fair wind 
that drove the flames on the town. " See, Lord, 
what ill Penda is doing," 5 cried Aidan, from his her- 
mit cell in the islet of Fame, as he saw the smoke 
drifting over the city ; and a change of wind — so ran 
the legend of Northumbrian agony — drove back at 
the words the flames on those who had kindled them. 
But, burned and harried as it was, Bernicia still clung 
to the Cross. Oswiu, a third son of yFthelfrith, who 
had been called from Hii in 642 to fill the throne of 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 13. 2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 6. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 7. 4 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 14. 

5 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 16. 



2 gg THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vr. his brother Oswald, gave little promise in his earlier 
The days of those qualities which were to make his later 
brian su- reign a landmark in our history. 1 During the first 
premacy. n j ne y ears f his reign, indeed, he was king only of 
617-659. Bernicia, and over Bernicia the host of Penda poured 
summer after summer in the terrible raids which we 
have described. But, terrible as they were, Oswiu 
held stoutly to his ground ; and after some years he 
found himself not only master of his own people, 
but able to build up again the wider realm of the 
Northumbrians. 
Restora- Oswini, who had occupied the Deiran throne since 
Nortjmm- the fis:ht at the Maserfeld, was a son of that Osric 
who had reigned for the miserable year which fol- 
lowed Eadwine's defeat at Heathfield. But the relig- 
ious activity of Oswald and of Aidan had done its 
work. Unlike his father, Oswini was a Christian to 
the core ; and his piety and humility won the love 
of Aidan, as his personal beauty and liberality won 
the love of his people. 2 But neither the one love nor 
the other could avert the young king's doom. A 
marriage which Oswiu concluded showed his pur- 
pose of recovering Deira. Eadwine's younger chil- 
dren by his Kentish queen had been carried by her, 
after her fall, to her Kentish home ; 3 and the death of 
two of them left the girl Eanfled the representative 
of his line. Oswiu took Eanfled to wife, as his father, 
^Ethelfrith, had taken her aunt Acha; and, in the 
one case as in the other, the match had a political 
aim — that of neutralizing the loyalty of the men of 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 14. 2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 14. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. Really two children and one grand- 
child. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



289 



Deira to the line of JEWa.. It was, in fact, followed chap.vi. 
in 651 by the march of the Bernician king to the The 
south. The news of Oswiu's approach with an over- brTan su- 
powering host filled Oswini with despair — a despair premacy - 
quickened, no doubt, by consciousness of the treach- 617 ~ 659 - 
ery which was at work among his subjects ; he fled 
to the house of an ealdorman near Richmond, and 
was betrayed by him to a thegn whom Oswiu had de- 
spatched to kill him. 1 The blow broke Aidan's heart ; 
and twelve days after it the bishop lay dying among 
his brethren at Lindisfarne. Far off, on the sheep- 
walks of the Lammermoor, a shepherd -boy named 
Cuthbert, destined afterwards to a wider fame, saw 
stars falling thick over the sky into the sea, and took 
them for angels carrying homeward the soul of 
Bishop Aidan. But the fall of Oswini left Oswiu 
master of Deira; and Northumbria rose anew from 
the union of the two northern states — a union which 
was never henceforth to be dissolved. Oswini was 
the last male of the old kingly stock of Deira ; and 
with the extinction of their regal line passed away 
the reluctance of the Deirans to submit to the House 
of Ida. The restoration of the Northumbrian realm 
left Oswiu supreme from the Humber to the Forth ; 
and a great part of the Welsh, of the Picts, and of 
the Scots, on his western and northern border, not 
only bowed to his overlordship as they had bowed 
to Oswald's, but even owned their subjection by pay- 
ment of tribute. 2 

But the reconstruction of the Northumbrian king-- Onmuand 

Penda. 

dom was hardly brought about when a succession of • 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 14. 2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5. 

19 



290 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



CHAF - vr - events in Central Britain showed that Oswiu had 
The taken up again the wider task of Oswald and Ead- 
brian su- wine. In the year after the annexation of Deira, in 
premacy. g^i p enc [ a 's son Peada, whom his father had set as 
617-659. under-king over the Middle English, or Leicester- 
men, sought Oswiu's daughter Alchfleda to wife. 
The two royal houses were already linked by mar- 
riage, for Penda's daughter was the wife of' Oswiu's 
son, Alchfrith ; and Alchfrith's persuasion won over 
Peada to •Christianity as the price of his sister's hand. 
He was baptized by Bishop Finan, Aidan's successor 
in the see of Lindisfarne, 2 and the priests whom 
Peada brought back with him preached busily and 
successfully, not only among his own subjects, but 
ventured in the following year to penetrate even 
among the Mercians themselves. Penda gave them 
no hindrance. In words which mark the temper of 
a man of whom we would willingly know more, Basda 
tells us that the old king 3 only "hated and scorned 
those whom he saw not doing the works of the faith 
they had received." 4 " They were miserable and 
scorn-worthy men," he said, " who shrank from obey- 
ing the God in whom they trusted." His attitude 
proves that Penda looked with the tolerance of his 
race on all questions of creed, and that he fought 
not for heathendom, but for independence. If he 

1 Baeda does not date the wooing of Peada or the conversion of 
the Mid-Engle ; but as they followed the annexation of Deira and 
preceded the further attempts to convert the Mercians themselves, 
which he puts in 653 ("ccepta sunt haec biennio ante mortem Pen- 
dae regis," Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 21), we must assign them to 652. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 21. 

3 If he was fifty at his accession, in 626, he was nearly eighty when 
he fell at the Winwaed. * Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 21. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 29 1 

struck down Eadwine and Oswald, it was not be- chap.vi. 
cause their missionaries spread along the eastern The 
coast, but because their lordship spread with their brians?" 
missionaries. Quietly, therefore, as he watched the premacy- 
spread of the new religion among his own people, 617 ~ 659 - 
he may have watched with jealousy the conversion 
of Essex, which took place in the same year that 
the Northumbrian preachers appeared on the upper 
Trent. The thr©wing-off of Christianity and of the 
Kentish supremacy by the two young kings of the 
East Saxons in the days of Bishop Mellitus, had 
been quickly followed by their fall in a disastrous 
conflict with the West Sexe ; L but we do not again 
catch sight of the little realm till we find at this 
moment its king, Sigeberht, a friend and guest of 
Oswiu's in the king's vill by the Roman Wall. The 
pressure of Oswiu 2 brought about Sigeberht's bap- 
tism and conversion, and his return to his people 
was followed by Oswiu's despatch of the missionary 
Cedd, who was working among the Middle Engle, 
to this new work on the eastern coast. 3 

The extension of Oswiu's influence over Essex was Penda and 
obviously a prelude to a renewal of the old strife be- Engle. 
tween Penda and Northumbria for the domination 
over East Anglia. Now, as before, the supremacy 



1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5. The Gewissas may have been tempted 
to replace iEthelberht's overlordship by their own, or it is possible 
that the strife sprang simply from the loose and unfixed character 
of the frontier between the two peoples. See Stubbs, in Diet. Christ. 
Biog. vol. ii. p. 20. The liberty of St. Albans may represent the waste 
"mark " between East and West Sexe. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 22 : " instantia regis Oswiu." 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 22. Cedd's movements fix the date of these 
events in 653. 



2 Q 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. over East Anglia was essential to the wider suprem- 
The acy of Northumbria over the centre of the island, 
brian su- For the new state of Mid-Britain it was more ; it was 
premacy. a - question of life and death. Without the East En- 
617-659. gle, the power which had again and again grouped 
itself round ^Ethelberht and Rasdwald and Penda 
must cease to exist. On the other hand, the East 
Engle were still averse from the rule of their fellow- 
Engle in the west; and now that dependencies of 
Oswiu's lay on either side of them, they would natu- 
rally begin to stir. There can be little doubt that 
Penda's fresh attack' on them in 654 — an attack in 
which Sigeberht's successor Anna was slain and his 
kingdom cruelly ravaged — was the result of a fresh 
attempt at revolt. A third brother, ^thelhere, bowed 
anew to the Mercian yoke, and marched among the 
soldiers of Penda. yEthelhere, we know not how, 
was the cause of the war 2 which followed with North- 
umbria. It is possible that the under-king endeav- 
ored to win independence by playing off the two 
great powers on either side of him against one an- 
other. But that Oswiu strove to avert the conflict 
we see from the delivery of his youngest son, Ecgfrith, 
as a hostage into Penda's hands. The sacrifice, 
however, proved useless. Penda was again the as- 
sailant, and his attack was as vigorous as of old. He 
was aided, too, by internal dissension in the North- 
umbrian realm. Oidilwald, a son of Oswald, had 
been set by Oswiu 3 as an under-king over at least 
part of Deira ; but in this crisis he joined the Mer- 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 18. For date, see Hussey's note. 

2 " Auctor ipse belli " (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24). 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 23, 24. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 293 

cians, and his defection opened a way for Penda's chap.vi. 
march into the heart of the land. The 

The old king again passed ravaging over the coun- bSan su- 
try as far northward as Bamborough, " destroying all premacy - 
he could with fire and sword ;" ' while Oswiu, unable 617-659. 
to meet him in the field, was driven by need to seek Battle of 
for peace. Penda, however, set roughly aside the weed. 
gifts which the king offered; he had resolved, so 
men believed, to root out and destroy the whole peo- 
ple of the Northumbrians. But, broken as they were, 
despair gave strength to the men of the north. A 
small host gathered round Oswiu, and the king 
vowed — should the day be his — to give his daughter 
to God and to found twelve monasteries. " Since 
the pagan will not take our gifts," he said, " let us 
offer them to One that will." Success, however, 
seemed hopeless ; for when Oswiu met the Mercian 
army near the river Winwaed in 655, he found it 
thrice as strong as his own. Thirty ealdormen fol- 
lowed Penda ; /Ethelhere brought his East Angli- 
ans to his aid, and Oidilwald the men of Eastern 
Deira. Never had the odds seemed more unequal, 
but never was an overthrow more complete. Oidil- 
wald proved as faithless to Penda as he had proved' 
to Oswiu : he drew off his men in the midst of the 
fight and waited for its issue. It ended in the rout 
and slaughter of the Mercians. Great rains had 
swelled the river in the rear of their broken host, 
" and more were drowned in their flight than fell 
by the sword." But the noblest of the Mercian war- 
riors remained on the field. 2 Of the thirty ealdor- 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 17. 2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24. 



294 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vi. m en who marched at Penda's bidding hardly one was 
The left alive; ./Ethelhere fell fighting in the midst of 
brian^u-' his East Englishmen, and Penda himself was slain, 
premacy. « j n ^ e r i ver Winwasd," rang out the triumphant 
617-659. battle-song of the conquerors — 

" In the river Winwaed is avenged the slaughter of Anna, 
The slaughter of the kings Sigberht and Ecgrice, 
The slaughter of the kings Oswald and Edwine."i 

Fail of For the moment the ruin of Mercia seemed com- 
plete. The supremacy it had won over its neigh- 
bors to the south must have passed away with the 
great defeat. The West Saxons resumed their old 
independence, and the force which they gained from 
this deliverance spurred them to take up again their 
long-interrupted advance against the Britons in the 
west. In 655, a victory at Bradford on the Avon 
drove the Welsh from their stronghold in the wood- 
lands which ran like a wedge into West-Saxon land 
up the valley of the Frome ; and a second campaign, 
three years later, settled the West Saxons as con- 
querors round the sources of the Parret. But the 
loss of outer influence was little beside the internal 
ruin of the Mercian State itself. The power which 
had grown up in Central Britain crumbled beneath 
Oswiu's blow. The peoples whom Penda had brought 
together sheered off into their old isolation. East 
Anglia, the actual prize of the contest, naturally found 
a new overlord in Oswiu. Lindsey passed under the 
direct rule of the Northumbrian conqueror, and if 
the Southumbrians about Nottingham escaped the 

1 Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. ed. Arnold, p. 60, has preserved this 
snatch of English song. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



295 



same fate, it was by their revival as a distinct king- chap^vi. 
dom, though subject, no doubt, to the overlord in the The 
north. The removal of Peada from his sovereignty brian Su " 
over the Middle English of Leicester shows that P remac y- 



*&' 



these too, probably with their neighbors the South 617-659. 
English of Northampton, were freed from the su- 
premacy of Mercia. The Mercian people itself, re- 
duced as it thus was to its original settlement along 
the upper Trent, lost its national unity. Its old di- 
vision into a North-Mercian and a South-Mercian 
folk reappeared, 1 whether from civil strife which fol- 
lowed on the great defeat, or as a part of the policy 
of their conqueror. The larger part of the Mercian 
people, the North Mercians who dwelt on the north 
side of the Trent, were made directly subject to 
Northumbria. The South Mercians alone remained 
under the rule of Peada; but Peada only received 
his kingship over them as a gift from Oswiu, 2 and 
that not because he was of the kingly stock, but be- 
cause he was bound to Oswiu by the ties of his mar- 
riage and his Christian faith. 



<d 



Oswiu, on the other hand, was sovereign over Supremacy 
Britain as no English king save Eadwine had been 
before him. 3 The supremacy of Northumbria over 

1 Basda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24 : " Donavit (Oswiu) Peada . . . eo quod 
esset cognatus suus, regnum australium Merciorum." 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24 : " Tribus annis post occisionem Pendan 
regis, Merciorum genti, necnon et cseteris australium provinciarum 
populis prsefuit, qui etiam gentem Pictorum maxima ex parte reg- 
no Anglorum subjecit." So Bseda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 5, says of Oswiu: 
" ^Equalibus pene terminis (as those of Oswald and Eadwine), reg- 
num nonnullo tempore coercens, Pictorum quoque atque Scottorum 
gentes, quae septemtrionales Brittanioe fines tenent, maxima ex parte 
perdomuit ac tributarias fecit." 



296 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap, vr. the Britons of Cumbria and Strathclyde was re- 
The stored. The Picts and Scots of the north were forced 
brian su- to pay tribute. In Mid-Britain, Oswiu no longer saw 
premacy. a p 0W er growing fast into a danger, but a mass of 
617-659. broken peoples, all of them in some way owing him 
obedience. Over Lindsey, the men of North Mercia, 
and the South English, he must have ruled for the 
moment in direct sovereignty ; ' while the petty king- 
dom of the Southumbrians, the larger realms of the 
East Anglians and the East Saxons, probably the 
West Saxons themselves, owned his supremacy. 
Northumbria itself, too, was finally made. The royal 
stock of Deira had come to an end, and with its ex- 
tinction passed away the strife between the men of 
Bernicia. From Oswiu's day all the Englishmen of 
the north were simply Northumbrians, and this inner 
unity gave fresh weight to the political influence 
which the kingdom exerted outside its own bounds. 

o 

Revival of g u |- the dream of a single people gathered together 
around the kings of Northumbria no sooner seemed 
realized than it vanished forever away. Peada had 
scarcely received the gift of the South-Mercian realm 
when his death tempted Oswiu to complete his mas- 
tery of Central Britain by annexing even the small 
folk that the young king had ruled. For three years 
the Mercians bore this foreign rule ; but in 659 the 
whole people broke out in revolt, drove Oswiu's 
thegns from the land, and raised a younger son of 
Penda, who had till now remained in hiding, to the 
throne." Under its new king, Wulfhere, Mercia rose 



1 " Ipso (Penda) occiso, cum Oswiu rex Christianus regnum ejus 
acciperet" (Breda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 21). 2 Bteda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24. 




Htanjord'6 Ueograt/Ui ±.sta ! J$ 



298 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vi. at once into a power greater than that of Penda, and 

The which it would need a greater victory than that of 

Brians?" the Winwaed to overthrow. But the revolution 

premacy. mar ked more than the revival of Mercia. It marked 

617-659. the abandonment by Northumbria of her long efforts 

to carry her supremacy over the rest of Britain. So 

irresistible had been the movement of revolt that 

Oswiu seems to have acquiesced without a struggle 

in the overthrow of his rule, and to have contented 

himself for the few remaining years of his life with a 

nominal overlordship across the H umber. Even this 

passed away at his death, in 670, and his successors 

sank into merely local sovereigns. 1 Whatever bick- 



: Baeda, Hist. Eccl. lib. ii., ends his list of those who held an impe- 
rium with Oswiu. ^Ethelberht of Kent " tertius quidem in regibus 
gentis Anglorum, cunctis australibus eorum provinciis quae Humbrae 
fluvio et contiguis ei terminis sequestrantur a borealibus imperavit ; 
sed primus omnium cselestia regna conscendit. Nam primus impe- 
rium hujusmodi ^Elli rex AustraliumSaxonum ; secundus Ceelin rex 
Occidentalium Saxonum, qui lingua eorum Ceaulin vocabatur ; ter- 
tius, ut dixi, ^Edilberct rex Cantuariorum ; quartus Redwald rex 
Orientalium Anglorum, qui etiam vivente yEdilbercto eidem suae 
genti ducatum praebebat, obtinuit ; quintus ^Eduin rex Nordan- 
hymbrorum gentis, id est, ejus quae ad borealem Humbrae fluminis 
plagam inhabitat, majore potentia cunctis qui Brittaniam incolunt, 
Anglorum pariter et Brittonum populis praefuit, praeter Cantuariis 
tantum ; necnon et Mevanias Brittonum insulas, quae inter Hiber- 
niam et Brittaniam sitae sunt, Anglorum subjecit imperio ; sextus 
Osuald et ipse Nordanhymbrorum rex Christianissimus, hisdem fini- 
bus regnum tenuit ; septimus Oswiu frater ejus, aequalibus pene 
terminis regnum nonnullo tempore coercens, Pictorum quoque at- 
que Scottorum gentes, quae septemtrionales Brittanise fines tenuit, 
maxima ex parte perdomuit, ac tributarias fecit " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. 
ii. 5). In the middle of the ninth century the clerk of Winchester, 
who threw together the earlier entries of the English Chronicle, 
when he reached his entry for the year 827, " In this year king Ecg- 
berht conquered the Mercian kingdom and all that was south of 
Humber," added, "and he was the eighth king that was Bretwalda." 
Then copying from Baeda this list of names from ^Ella to Oswiu, he 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 299 

erings over a border province there might be with chap.vi. 
Mercia, no Northumbrian king from that time made The 
any effort to crush the rival states in Central or brianSu-" 

premacy. 

adds at the close of it, " the eighth was Ecgberht, King of the West 617-659. 
Saxons." The two passages together form the ground of Sir F. 
Palgrave's theory of a derivation of the Roman Imperial authority 
through Maximus, etc., to ^Ella and Ecgberht, which is examined 
and dismissed by Mr. Freeman (Norman Conquest, vol. i. appendix, 
note B), and of Mr. Freeman's own theory of the Bretwaldadom, in 
which the imperium of Baeda is made to mean " a real though not 
an abiding or a very well-defined supremacy which was often, per- 
haps generally, held by some one of the Teutonic princes of Britain 
over as many of his neighbors, Celtic and Teutonic alike, as he 
could extend it over." The little word Celtic in this very cautious- 
ly expressed passage is, no doubt, big enough to serve as a base for 
the theory of an imperial character which Mr. Freeman attributes 
to the rule of the later West-Saxon kings through their supremacy 
over the Celtic peoples about them. Such a theory in the case of 
the later monarchy may be true or false ; but in applying it to the 
kings in Baeda's list we seem to me to be going beyond the evidence 
we possess. As to the title Bretwalda, there is no ground for as- 
suming it to be earlier than the date at which we first find it in the 
Chronicle, or for giving it, with Swithun's clerk, to these earlier 
rulers. The silence not only of Baeda, but of every historical docu- 
ment or charter up to the ninth century, is surely fatal to any 
theory of its official existence at this time. Nor can we attach any 
great weight to the historical knowledge of the writer who attrib- 
utes it to ^Ella and Oswiu, when we find that as soon as he comes 
to the end -of Basda's list the chronicler leaps over a century and a 
half of our history, and over kings such as vEthelbald and Offa, to 
pin his own sovereign Ecgberht on to the close of it. But if we set 
aside the word Bretwalda, and the theories which I believe its in- 
correct rendering as " ruler of the Britons " first gathered round it, 
and restrict ourselves to the meaning of Baeda's imperium, the mat- 
ter becomes very much simpler. Baeda himself explains the impe- 
rium as a ducatus — the position, that is, of a here-toga, or war-leader. 
There is no historic ground in the case of the first four kings in his 
list for extending such a war-leadership over any Britons at all. In 
the case of yElla, indeed, Mr. Freeman admits such a supposition to 
be impossible. But the passages which show that in ^Ella's later 
days the attacks of the Gewissas on the coast of the Gwent were 
supported by forces from Kent and Sussex make it, at any rate, pos- 



300 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



CHAP. VI. 



Southern Britain ; the threefold division of the con- 
quered land was accepted as a settled fact by the 
statesmen of the north ; and if they henceforth sought 
premacy. ^ w ' l( ^ en their borders, it was not by conquests over 
617-659. Englishmen, but by conquests over Cumbrian or Pict. 



The 
Northum 
brian Su- 



sible that this union of the three peoples in their attack was under 
the war-leadership of this king, who must at that time have held 
the highest position among the conquering tribes. Of Ceawlin in 
this respect we know nothing ; but Breda has carefully defined for 
us the limits both of ^Ethelberht's and Rredwald's supremacy, and 
in neither case is any British people included within it. In their 
cases the imperium must have meant a supremacy or war-lead- 
ership over Englishmen alone ; and it is in this sense, therefore, 
that we must apply the word to Eadwine, Oswald, and Oswiu, 
though these three Northumbrian kings undoubtedly had British 
peoples among their tributaries. I am inclined to think that the 
chronicler's entry came about in a very simple way. In the passage 
of Breda which lay before him he read that iEthelberht " cunctis 
australibus eorum provinciis quae Humbrse fluvio et contiguis ei ter- 
minis sequestrantur a borealibus imperavit." Here, as in so many 
cases throughout his book, Breda is distinguishing between the 
" Nordanhymbri " and the " Sudanhymbri " — the Engle north of the 
Humber, and the Engle south of it, to the exclusion of the Kentish- 
men and the various Saxon tribes. What he points out is, that it 
was over the Southern Engle — the Engle, that is, of Mid-Britain or 
the later Mercia — that yEthelberht's imperium extended, and it 
was over the same district that Rredwald's imperium extended after 
him. Now, if we look at the chronicler's entry, we shall see that it 
was not when the Kentishmen submitted to him in 823, or when he 
completed his conquests by the annexation of Northumbria, that 
the writer tags Ecgberht on to the Bretwaldas, but when in the in- 
terval between them he conquered "the kingdom of the Mer- 
cians and all that was south of the Humber." The chronicler's own 
words probably recalled to him Breda's phrase about an imperium 
over "all the provinces south of the Humber," and in a very natu- 
ral, if pedantic, way he at once linked on his hero to the list of 
Breda's seven kings. This would account for his omission of names 
like that of Offa, so startling to Mr. Kemble ; for from Oswiu's day 
to Ecgberht's day no one had made this particular conquest of 
Mercia, just because Mercia during this period had been the domi- 
nant power in Southern Britain. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^OI 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE CHURCH AND THE KINGDOMS. 
659-690. 

With the failure of Northumbria, the union of the The 
conquerors of Britain in a single nation for the time and the 
became impossible. Far as the northern kingdom nahon - 
surpassed the rest in political and military develop- 
ment, half a century of bitter struggle had failed to 
reveal in it such a preponderance of power as would 
force the states south of the Humber to bow to its 
permanent supremacy. That Mercia or Wessex 
should succeed where Northumbria had failed was 
as yet out of the question ; and when Oswiu's realm 
withdrew into practical isolation, all hope of national 
union seemed to vanish away. But at this moment 
a new element began to play its part in English life. 
The battle of the Winwasd had proved a delusive 
triumph for Northumbria ; but it was a decisive vic- 
tory for the Cross. With it all active resistance on 
the part of the older heathendom came to an end. 
Christianity, which had gradually won recognition as 
a State religion in Northern, Eastern, and Southern 
Britain, became, with the submission of Mercia, the 
faith of the new England at large ; and the worship 
of Woden only lingered for a few years to come in 
the petty and isolated kingdom of the South Saxons, 
which lay severed from the rest of the island by the 



„ 02 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vn. An dreds weald. The religious hopes of Gregory 
The were realized in the subjection of Britain to the new 

an? the faith, and the time had come for the carrying-out of 
Kingdoms, those plans which he had devised for its ecclesiasti- 

659-690. ca } administration. Nothing was more characteris- 
tic of Roman Christianity than its administrative or- 
ganization. Its ordered hierarchy of bishops, priests, 
and lower clergy, its judicial and deliberative ma- 
chinery, its courts and its councils, had become a 
part of its very existence, and settled with it on ev- 
ery land that it won. Gregory, as we have seen, 
had plotted out the yet heathen Britain into an or- 
dered Church with two archbishoprics, each sur- 
rounded by twelve suffragan sees ; and though the 
carrying-out of this scheme in its actual form had 
proved impossible, yet it was certain that the first 
effort of the Roman see, now that the ground was 
clear, would be to replace it by some analogous ar- 
rangement. But no such religious organization 
could stamp itself on English soil without telling on 
the civil organization about it. The regular subor- 
dination of priest to bishop, of bishop to primate, in 
the administration of the Church would supply a 
mould on which the civil organization of the State 
would unconsciously, but irresistibly, shape itself. 
The gatherings of the clergy in national synods 
would inevitably lead the way to national gatherings 
for civil legislation. Above all, if the nation in its 
spiritual capacity came to recognize the authority of 
a single primate, it would insensibly be led, in its 
temporal capacity, to recognize a single sovereign. 

_. The . . But the hopes of such an organization rested in 

Church in L o 

the north, the submission of the English states to the Church 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 303 

of Rome ; and it was not the Church of Rome which CHAP - vn. 
had won the victory of the Winwaed, or which seemed The 
likely to reap its fruits. After its efforts at exten- an aS e 
sion under .^Ethelberht and Eadwine, the Roman Kingdom3 - 
mission had for a while sunk into a mere Church of 659-680. 
Kent; and though the Burgundian Felix, who had 
taken the lead in a mission to East Anglia, 1 and 
Birinus, with his successor, the Frankish bishop 
Agilberct, who were preaching in Wessex,'" were 
both attached to the Roman communion, the recent 
and imperfect conversion of these countries gave 
them as yet little weight in the religious balance of 
the country. The real life and energy of the new 
Christianity were concentrated in the north, and the 
north looked for its religious centre, not to Rome, 
but to Ireland. Never was the connection of Brit- 
ain with Ireland closer than in the years that fol- 
lowed Penda's fall. The spell which it cast over 
Northumbria was irresistible. 3 To cross the Irish 
Channel, whether for piety or for learning, became 
a fashion in the north, 4 while fresh missionaries 
streamed over in turn to wander into the wildest 
spots where English heathendom found a hold. 
One solitary made his way as far as the South Sax- 
ons. 5 Another settled among the East Englishmen, 
and left his memory to a monastery in Suffolk. 5 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 15. 2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 7. 

3 We see an amusing proof of this in Bseda's statement that he 
had seen persons bitten by serpents cured by drinking water into 
which scrapings of the leaves of books that had been brought out 
of Ireland had been put (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. i. 1). 

* Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 7 ; iv. 3, 4 ; v. 9, 10. 

5 Dicul. Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 13. 

6 Fursey. Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 19. 



304 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. Nor was the Northumbrian Church itself wanting 

The in missionaries as ardent as these. The brothers 

and the Cedd and Ceadda — one the apostle of Essex, 1 the oth- 

Kingdoms. er of the Mercians (the St. Chadd to whom the Mer~ 

659-690. c i an see of Lichfield still looks as its founder) — were 
only instances of the zeal of their day. So simple 
and lowly in temper was Ceadda that he travelled on 
foot in his mission journeys till Archbishop Theo- 
dore, in later days, lifted him with his own hands on 
horseback. The poetry of their early Christian en- 
thusiasm breaks out in the death-legend that tells 
how voices of singers singing sweetly descended 
from heaven to a little cell beside St. Mary's Church, 
where the Mercian bishop lay dying. Then " the 
same song ascended from the roof again and re- 
turned heavenward by the same way that it came." 2 

Cuthbert. g u t the work of these missionaries has been al- 
most lost in the glory of Cuthbert. 3 No story better 
lights up for us the religious life of the time than the 
story of this apostle of the Lowlands — a story that 
carries us into the northernmost part of Northumbria, 
into the country of the Teviot and the Tweed. Born 
on the southern edge of the Lammermoor, a line of 
dark uplands which runs eastward to the sea at 
Dunbar, Cuthbert found shelter at eight years old 
in the house of a widow who dwelt in the village 
of Wrangholm. In after - years he loved to tell 



i Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 22, 23. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 3. 

3 For Cuthbert we have (a) an anonymous life by a contem- 
porary (in Bseda, Opera Minora, ed. Stevenson, p. 259) ; (b) a life by 
Baeda, in some measure drawn from this, but with fresh informa- 
tion from contemporaries (in the same volume, p. 49) ; and Baeda's 
abstract of the latter in his Ecclesiastical History, iv. 27. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



305 



stories of his boyhood — of the strength and agility chap. vh. 
which made him the best runner and wrestler among The 
the village children, of his quickness of wit, his love an d the 
of laughter and fun. 1 But already his robust frame Kingdoms - 
hid a poetic sensibility which caught, even in the 659-690. 
chance word of a game, a call to higher things. An 
attack of lameness deepened the religious impres- 
sion. It was for his sins, the boy thought, that God 
had chained and bound him ; and a rider who came 
one day over the hill, mounted on a fine horse, and 
clad in the graceful white riding-cloak which was 
common among the nobles of the time, seemed, as 
he pitied and tended the injured limb, an angel sent 
to brine: forgiveness and health. 2 From that time 
Cuthbert's bent was to a religious life. It was of 
this that he dreamed as he kept his master's sheep 
on the bleak uplands whence the Leader flows into 
the Tweed — upland still famous as a sheep-walk, 
though a scant herbage scarce veils the whinstone 
rock. 3 We see him for a while keeping watches of 
prayer in the night while his comrades sleep around, 
or in lonelier hours breaking the stillness of the 
heights with hymns, or seeing in splendor of' falling 
stars and northern lights angel-troops ascending and 
descending between earth and heaven. The news 
which was " noised far and wide " of Bishop Aidan's 
death woke him from this dream-life, and in 65 1 he 
made his way to a group of straw-thatched log-huts 
in the midst of an untilled solitude, where a few Irish 
monks from Lindisfarne had settled in the mission- 
station of Melrose. 4 

1 Anon. Vit. p. 261. 2 Anon. Vit. p. 262. 3 Anon. Vit. p. 263. 

4 Anon. Vit. pp. 264, 267 ; Bseda's Life, cap. 6. This was not on the 

20 



306 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. To-day the land is a land of poetry and romance. 
The Cheviot and Lammermoor, Ettrick and Teviotdale, 
and the Yarrow and Annan Water, are musical with old bal- 
Kingdoms. i ac j g anc j Dorc [er minstrelsy. Agriculture has chosen 
659-690. its valleys for her favorite seat, and drainage and 
His mis- steam-power have turned sedgy marshes into farm 
' and meadow. But to see the lowlands as they were 
in Cuthbert's day, we must sweep meadow and farm 
away again, and replace them by vast solitudes, dot- 
ted here and there with clusters of wooden hovels, 
and crossed by boggy tracts along which travellers 
rode spear in hand and eye kept cautiously about 
them. 1 Though the new religion had already its 
adherents even in remote villages, the Northumbrian 
peasantry were, for the most part, Christians only in 
name. With the general religious indifference of 
their race, they had yielded to their thegns in nomi- 
nally accepting the new belief, as these had yielded 
to the king. But they retained their old supersti- 
tions side by side with the new worship ; plague or 
mishap drove them back to a reliance on their hea- 
then charms and. amulets ; and if trouble befell the 



site of the present abbey, but at the spot known as " Old Melrose." 
" On a green sheltered slope, a little below the point where the 
Tweed receives the scanty waters of the Leader, and then takes a 
bold semicircular sweep under the wood and rocks of Bemerside " 
(Raine, Dictionary of Christian Biography, i. 725). Thence after a 
few years he went to Ripon with his abbot Eata, to whom King 
Alchfrid had given ground there for a monastery, but was expelled 
in 661 by Wilfrid, and returned to Melrose to face the pestilence. 
In 664, after the Synod of Whitby, he was sent as prior to Lindis- 
farne, and after staying there twelve years (664-676) withdrew to 
the isle of Fame. It was these later years at Melrose and Lindis- 
farne that formed the time of his main mission work. 
1 Bseda, Life of Cuthbert, cap. 6. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 307 

Christian preachers who came settling among them, chap, vh. 
they took it as proof of the wrath of the older gods. The 
When some log-rafts, which were floating down the and the 
Tyne for the construction of an abbey at its mouth, Kmgdoms - 
drifted, with the monks who were at work on them, 659-690. 
out to sea, the rustic bystanders shouted, " Let no- 
body pray for them ; let nobody pity these men, who 
have taken away from us our old worship ; and how 
their new-fangled customs are to be kept, nobody 
knows." ' While Oswiu was nerving himself for the 
struggle with Penda, Cuthbert wandered among lis- 
teners such as these, choosing, above all, the remoter 
mountain villages from whose roughness and pov- 
erty other teachers turned aside. Unlike his Irish 
comrades, the missionaries who had followed Aidan, 
he needed no interpreter as he passed from village 
to village: the frugal, long-headed Northumbrians 
listened willingly to one who was himself a peasant 
of the Lowlands, and who had caught the rough 
Northumbrian burr along the banks of the Tweed. 
His patience, his humorous good-sense, the sweet- 
ness of his look, told for him, and not less the vigor- 
ous frame which fitted the peasant-preacher for the 
hard life he had chosen. "Never did man die of 
hunger who served God faithfully," he would say 
when nightfall found them supperless in the waste. 
" Look at the ea^le overhead ! God can feed us 
through him if he will ;" and once, at least, he owed 
his meal to a fish that the scared bird had let fall. 2 
At another time, a snow-storm drove his boat on the 
coast of Fife. " The snow closes the road along the 

1 Bseda, Life of Cuthbert, cap. 3. 2 Basda, Life of Cuthbert, cap. 1 2. 



3 o8 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vn. shore," mourned his comrades ; " the storm bars our 
The way over-sea." ' : There is still the way of heaven 
rad tS that lies open," said Cuthbert. 
Kingdoms. g u ^ p 0e tic as was its temper, and unwearied as 
G59-690. wa s the energy which it showed in the work of con- 
sevemnce version, the success of the Irish Church threatened 
JmrcLs. Britain with both political and religious ills. The 
Celtic Church, as we have seen, in its own Irish home, 
was utterly devoid of that power of organization 
which was the strength of the Church of Rome. 
Hundreds of wandering bishops ; a vast religious au- 
thority wielded by hereditary chieftains ; an inextri- 
cable confusion of tribal quarrels, and ecclesiastical 
controversies in which the clergy, robbed of all really 
spiritual influence, contributed no element save that 
of disorder to the State ; a wild jungle-growth of as- 
ceticism which dissociated piety from morality; and 
the absence of those larger and more humanizing 
influences which a wider world alone can give — this 
is the picture which the Irish Church of later times 
presents to us. Nor would the Irish Church in 
Northern Britain have found very different fortunes. 
It had brought with it the purely monastic system 
of its home ; and, great as were its missionary labors, 
it showed no trace of any power of moulding the 
new Christianity into an ordered form. But even 
had it shown such a power, its permanent establish- 
ment would have been none the less disastrous. The 
religious unity of the English race would, in fact, 
have been broken even more fatally than its politi- 
cal unity was broken. To the Church of the Roman 
obedience — to the Church, that is, of Kent, East An- 
glia, and Wessex — the Irish Church seemed as schis- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^ Q g 

matfc as the Church of Wales. Both alike held aloof chap, to. 
from any definite submission to the Church of Rome ; The 
both clung to a tonsure of their own ; both kept an d tie 
Easter at a season different from that of the rest of Kin g doms - 
the Christian world. The difference sprang s;mply 659-690. 
from the long severance of the Celtic churches from 
the general body of Christendom ; but when the 
conversion of Britain removed the barrier which iso- 
lated them, and again brought them face to face with 
the West, its real origin was lost in the fanatical ha- 
tred with which the Roman ecclesiastics denounced 
these usages, and the no less fanatical obstinacy with 
which the Irish ecclesiastics clung to them. To the 
one side the Irish tonsure was the tonsure of Simon 
Magus, the Irish Easter a Jewish Passover. To the 
other the tonsure was the tonsure of Columba, their 
Easter a tradition of St. John. So long as both ri- 
vals were threatened with the triumph of heathendom 
under Penda, any strife between them seems to have 
been carefully avoided. But with the disappearance 
of this common danger a collision became inevitable ; 
and the continuance of both as equal powers on Eng- 
lish soil must have torn Englishmen asunder more 
fatally than any political parting. 

Even in the years that preceded his final struggle Ap ^ c e h 
with Penda, Oswiu had been forced to watch anxious- strife. 
ly the first signs of a gathering storm which was to end 
in open conflict between the churches. The storm 
was roused by the very step which he had taken to 
secure his rule in Deira; for if his marriage furthered 
the political union of the two northern realms, re- 
ligiously it added a new element of discord to them. 
Eanfled brought with her the Roman traditions and 



., IO THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. the Roman allegiance of the Church of Kent. 1 An 

The exile in the south from her childhood, she had known 

and the nothing of Aidan or his fellow-workers in the north ; 

Kingdoms. w \ l [\ e to the men among whom she lived the Church 

659-690. from which Aidan came seemed simply schismatic. 
Through the heathen reaction after Eadwine's fall, 
and through the reign of Oswald, a deacon named 
James, 2 the sole relic of the Church of Paulinus, had 
preserved the Roman usage in Deira; and he had 
instructed many in it " as the days brightened around 
him." James, however, might have lived on unheed- 
ed had not the coming of Eanfled given a new and 
powerful impulse to the movement. A Roman party 
at once formed about her. She brought with her a 
priest of the Roman Church in Kent, and observed 
the Roman Easter. While Oswiu, with his people, 
kept the Easter feast at the date fixed by his Irish 
missionaries, Eanfled, it was whispered, was still 
fasting for Lent. 3 

Benedict So long-, however, as Aidan lived, the reverence in 

Biscop. . & . 

which he was held hushed the faint whisper of com- 
ing strife. But with his death began the stirrings 
of two men who were destined to bring it quickly to 
a head. Born in the very year of Oswald's victory 
at the Hevenfeld, Wilfrid 4 had been sent in boyhood 
to study at Lindisfarne. 5 But in the very centre of 

1 Breda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 25. 

2 Breda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 20. 

3 Breda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 25. 

4 For Wilfrid we have a biography by Eddi, in Historians of the 
Church of York, ed. Raine, vol. i., and a more temperate statement 
in Breda, Hist. Eccl. v. 19. Benedict Biscop's life is the first in 
Breda's Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth and Yarrow (printed at 
end of Hussey's edition of Eccl. Hist.). 5 Eddi, cap. 2. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^ I1 

Irish influence he felt the spell of Rome ; and, young chap.vh. 
as he was, he resolved to visit the Imperial City. 1 The 
The thought sprang, doubtless, from the suggestion a nd the 
of Eanfled, to whom he was known, and who sent Kin g dom3 - 
him in 652, the year after Oswiu's conquest of Dei- 659-690. 
ra, with letters of protection to her cousin, King 
Earconberht of Kent. 2 The same craving was stir- 
ring in the heart of Benedict Biscop, a thegn of Os- 
wiu's court ; and the two young men, for Benedict 
was but five-and-twenty and Wilfrid seventeen, met 
in Kent, and crossed the sea together on their Ro- 
man pilgrimage. Wilfrid, however, remained at Ly- 
ons on his way, and Benedict alone reached Rome ; 
but the sight of the city kindled in him a fervor 
which showed itself on his return a year later in 
ceaseless preaching against the Irish usages. Oswiu's 
son Alchfrid, who had been raised to a share in his 
father's royalty, was stirred at last to vow the same 
pilgrimage ; 3 and, though he was unable to carry out 
his vow, his accession to the Roman party at once 
raised the quarrel of the churches into a grave po- 
litical question. But, harassing as was this grow- 
ing strife, the attention of Oswiu was absorbed in a 
struggle for life till the fall of Penda ; and after the 
victory of the Winwaed all thought of the little group 
of ecclesiastical rebels who clustered round Eanfled 
and Alchfrid was lost in the spiritual triumph of the 
Church of Lindisfarne. Finan had followed Aidan 
as bishop at Holy Island ; 4 and the years of his bish- 
opric were years of a wonderful activity. If Wessex- 
was won by a Roman missionary, the winning of 

1 Eddi, cap. 3. 2 Byeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 19. 

3 Baeda, Vit. Abbatum, p. 317. 4 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 17. 



- I2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vir. Central Britain, the reconquest of Essex, the first 

The evangelization even of the wild South Saxons, were 

andtSe the wor k °f missionaries from the Celtic Church of 

Kingdoms. t J ie n0 rth. 

659-690. But Alchfrid and Eanfled remained steadily at the 
wnfrid. head of their Roman party ; and the efforts of Ben- 
edict Biscop were soon reinforced by the arrival of a 
worker yet more dogged and energetic. This was 
Wilfrid, whom he had left behind in Gaul, and who, 
now returned, after two visits to Rome, to combat 
what he denounced as the schism of Northumbria. 1 
Young as he was, and he was still only a few years 
over twenty, Wilfrid's energy proved him a valuable 
ally, and Alchfrid set him as abbot, in 66 1, over a 
house which he had founded some years before at 
Ripon. The house had been an offshoot from Mel- 
rose, and Cuthbert was among the brethren who had 
come from Tweed-side to dwell there ; but to the 
young abbot these brethren were schismatics, and 
he drove them out. 2 Their expulsion brought the 
quarrel to a head, for the strife was hotly taken up 
by Finan's successor, Bishop Colman of Lindisfarne ; 
while Alchfrid summoned to Wilfrid's aid Bishop 
Agilberct, a Frank missionary who had been called, 
after the death of Birinus, to the see of the West 
Saxons. There is no ground, however, for believing 
that the efforts of the Roman party would have been 
more successful than of old had Oswiu continued to 
support the Church of Lindisfarne. Hitherto his 
support had been vigorous and unwavering. What- 
ever might be the hostility of his wife and son, the 

1 Eddi, cap. 7. 2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 19. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 313 

king remained true to the Church which had given chap.vh. 
shelter to the sons of /Ethelfrith in the days of their The 
exile. He had learned to speak Irish during his an ath e 
stay at Hii, 1 and his sympathy went with the Irish Kingdoms - 
clergy around him ; he loved Bishop Colman, as his 659-690. 
brother Oswald had loved Bishop Aidan. 2 The 
house, indeed, which he had just founded at Streo- 
nashalh as a thank-offering for his victory at the 
Winwasd was framed on the model of the house at ' 
Holy Island. 

But a marked change of temper was seen when Synod at 

1 i i -iTTi • 1 • ,, r 1 Whitby. 

he summoned a synod at Whitby in 664 tor the set- 
tlement of the disputed questions. 3 The forces, as 
they faced one another, still seemed strangely un- 
equal. The Roman party consisted, as of old, of 
none but Alchfrid, Bishop Agilberct, with his chap- 
lain Agatho, the priest James, and Abbot Wilfrid, 
for Benedict was on his way to Rome. On the other 
side were the representatives of almost the whole 
Church of Northumbria — Bishop Colman, the East- 
Saxon bishop Cedd (who acted as interpreter), the 
brethren of Lindisfarne, Abbess Hild, and the breth- 
ren and sisters of the very house in which the synod 
was gathered. Above all, the Irish party looked for 
aid to Oswiu himself, who presided over the mixed 
assembly of clergy and thegns. His first words, 
however, showed the drift of the king's policy. The 
disputed questions he submitted to the judgment of 
the council ; but he pressed earnestly for uniformity, 
and his resolve to obtain it was seen in his signifi.- 

1 " Oswiu . . . illorum etiam lingua optime imbutus " (Baeda, Hist. 
Eccl. iii. 25). 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 26. 3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 25. 



., I4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vir. cant interference at the close of the debate. Colman 
The pleaded hotly for the Irish fashion of the tonsure 

ST t£ and for the Irish time of ke ep in g Easter. Wilfrid's 
Kingdoms. pj ea f or the Roman, learned and elaborate as was 

659-690. its form, condensed itself in the single argument 
which he saw had weight with the king. "You 
fight," he said, " against the whole world." ' Still 
the debate went on. The one disputant appealed 
to the authority of Columba, the other to that of St. 
Peter. " You own," cried the king, at last, to Col- 
man, " that Christ gave to Peter the keys of the 
kingdom of heaven. Has he given such power to 
Columba ?" The bishop could but answer " No." 
" Then will I rather obey the porter of heaven," said 
Oswiu, " lest, when I reach its gates, he who has the 
keys in his keeping turn his back on me, and there 
be none to open." The humorous form of Oswiu's 
decision could not hide its importance ; and the 
synod had no sooner broken up than Colman, fol- 
lowed by the whole of the Irish-born brethren and 
thirty of their English fellows, forsook the see of 
Aidan and sailed away from Hii. 

its issues. it is possible that lesser political motives may have 
partly swayed Oswiu in his decision, for the revival 
of Mercia had left him but the alliance of Kent in 
the south, and this victory of the Kentish Church 
would draw tighter the bonds which linked together 
the two powers. But w r e may fairly credit him with 
a larger statesmanship. Trivial in fact as were the 
actual points of difference which parted the Roman 
Church from the Irish, the question to which com- 

1 "Contra totum orbem . . . pugnant" (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 25). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^1$ 

munion Northumbria should belong was, as we have chap.vii. 
seen, of immense moment to the after -fortunes of The 
England. It was not merely that, as Wilfrid said, and tS 
to fight against Rome was to fight against the world. Kingdoms - 
Had England, indeed, clung to the Irish Church, it 659-690. 
must have remained spiritually isolated from the 
bulk of Western Christendom. Fallen as Rome 
might be from its older greatness, it preserved the 
traditions of civilization, of letters and art and law. 
Its faith still served as a bond which held together 
the nations that sprang from the wreck of the Em- 
pire. To repulse Rome was to condemn England 
to isolation. But grave as such considerations were, 
they were of little weight beside the influence which 
Oswiu's decision had on the very unity of the Eng- 
lish race. The issue of the synod not only gave 
England a share in the religious unity of Western 
Christendom ; it gave her a religious unity at home. 
However dimly such thoughts may have presented 
themselves to Oswiu's mind, it was the instinct of a 
statesman that led him to set aside the love and 
gratitude of his youth, and to secure the religious 
oneness of England in the Synod of Whitby. 

From the Channel to the Firth of Forth the Eng- Thepri- 
lish Church was now a single religious body within 
the obedience of Rome, and the time had come for 
carrying out those plans of organization which Rome 
had conceived from the first moment of Augustine's 
landing. The actual scheme of ecclesiastical gov- 
ernment, indeed, which Gregory had then devised 
had broken down before the stress of facts. Of his 
two contemplated archbishoprics, York made as yet 
no claim to a primacy, while London gave way to 



3i6 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. the claims of Canterbury as the see of Augustine, 
The as the mother church of Britain; above all, as the 

ancuhe bishopric of the one realm which had from the first 
Kingdoms. rema i ne d Christian — the kingdom of Kent. Canter- 

659-680. bury had become the natural centre of ecclesiastical 
life, now that the life called for such a centre for its 
development. The choice of its primate thus be- 
came all-important ; and when the death of Arch- 
bishop Deusdedit, in the plague of 664, left the see 
of Canterbury vacant, Oswiu as still exercising some 
nominal supremacy over Britain, and Ecgberht of 
Kent as king of the actual diocese, joined in select- 
ing a priest named Wighard for the post and in 
sending him for consecration to Rome. The selec- 
tion of Wighard, following on that of Deusdedit, was 
in itself a notable step towards the nationalization 
of the Church, for Wighard, like his predecessor in 
the primacy, was an Englishman. Though seventy 
years had passed since Augustine's arrival, neither 
he nor the Roman missionaries who followed him 
— Laurentius, Mellitus, Justus, or Honorius — had ac- 
quired the English tongue ; and throughout their 
primacy the Kentish kings had been forced, like 
^Ethelberht, to gather what they could of their 
teaching through the means of interpreters. It 
marked the rise of a keener sense of nationality 
when Ecgberht, with Oswiu's assent, resolved to 
have " a bishop of his own race and his own 
tongue." ' 

1 " Cupiens eum sibi Romse ordinari episcopum, quatenus suae 
gentis et linguae habens antistitem, tanto perfectius, cum subjectis 
sibi populis, vel verbis imbueretur fidei vel mysteriis, quanto haec 
non per interpretem, sed per cognati et contribulis viri linguam si- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. „ T 7 

Wighard, however, died of plague on his arrival at CHAP - vn. 
Rome, and Pope Vitalian, interpreting the request of The 
the kings for the consecration of the primate they ancuL 
had selected as a request to find them a primate ' in Kmgdoms - 
any case, selected in Wighard's place a Neapolitan 659 ~ 690 - 
abbot of African race, named Hadrian. Hadrian, Theodore. 
however, refused the offer of so distant a see, 2 and it 
was with some difficulty that the Pope at last found 
an archbishop in Theodore, an Eastern monk born 
at Tarsus in Cilicia — a man famous for his learning 
and piety, but who had already reached the age of 
sixty-six. Aged, however, as he was, Theodore was 
kept four months in Rome till his Eastern tonsure 
could be superseded by a tonsure in the correct 
Roman fashion ; and the characteristic caution of the 
Roman Court was seen in its despatch of Hadrian 
as his companion, lest any shade of Greek hetero- 
doxy should be introduced by the new primate into 
Britain. 3 The result of these delays, and of a long 
detention in Gaul during his journey, was that The- 
odore did not land in Kent till the May of 669. 

The Britain which he found on his arrival had Mertia 
become in the interval a very different country from Wni/kere. 
the Britain which we last surveyed after the battle 
of the Winwsed. Northumbria, which then seemed 

mul manumque susciperet " (Bseda, Vit. Abbatum ; Hussey's Bseda, 
p. 317). The " contribulis " is emphatic too, for Deusdedit had been 
a West Saxon. 

1 See Vitalian's letter. Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, iii. in, 112, 
with the editor's note. 

2 " Antistitem," says Vitalian to Oswiu, " minime valuimus nunc 
reperire pro longinquitate itineris." 

3 " Ut ei doctrinse cooperator existens, diligenter adtenderet ne 
quid ille contrarium veritati fidei, Grsecorum more, in ecclesiam cui 
prseesset, introduceret " (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 1). 



3i8 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. supreme over the whole English race, had now re- 

The tired within her own bounds across the Humber, 

and tL an d retained none of her conquests to the south 

Kingdoms. £ ^^ r i ver save the territory of the Lindiswaras. 

659-690. Mercia, on the other hand, which then seemed ut- 
terly destroyed, had risen into a greatness it had 
never known before. If it left for a time Lindsev 
to Northumbria, it reft from that kingdom the dis- 
trict south of the Mersey, and with it at least the 
site and port of Chester. 1 In Mid-Britain, East An- 
glia may still have held aloof from Wulfhere, but in 
all other quarters the realm of Penda seems to have 
been quickly restored. Even the territory of the 
Hwiccas, which had been the spoil of the victory at 
Cirencester, again found itself in the Mercian grasp; 
for Wulfhere's rule was not only owned in the Sev- 
ern valley, but embraced the lower valley of the 
Wye. In this region, our Herefordshire, Wulfhere 
set his brother Merewald as an under-king. 2 But 
he did more than restore his father's realm. The 
renewed activity of the West Saxons, which had 
shown itself in their recent victories over the Brit- 
ons on their southwestern frontier, may have led to 
some fresh attempts to recover the lost territory of 
the Hwiccas ; but whatever was the cause of the con- 
flict between Cenwealh's host and that of Wulfhere 
in 66 1, it ended in so decisive a victory for the Mer- 

1 We have no record of this conquest or of its date ; but from 
this time we find Cheshire and the country as far as the Mersey in 
Mercian hands. 

2 " Germanus vero ipsius, Westan-Hecanorum rex, sanctus Mere- 
waldus " (Flor. Wore. Geneal. i. 265). The Hwiccas were in the same 
way ruled by subreguli ; in the next Mercian reign Oshere is 
" Hwicciorum subregulus " (Flor. Wore. Geneal. i. 239). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 3 IQ 

cians that their ravages extended into the heart of chap. vh. 
Wessex as far as Ashdown. 1 It was probably this The 
triumph which enabled Wulfhere to carry his arms and the 
into the valley of the Thames. To the eastward, Kingdoms - 
the East Saxons and London came to own his su- 659-690. 
premacy; 2 while southward he pushed across the 
river and over Surrey, which we find governed by 
an under-king of his appointment, 3 into Sussex. The 
wild Saxon tribe which was sheltered by the Weald 
may have sought his overlordship as a protection 
from the more pressing attacks of the West Saxons ; 
in 661, at any rate, their king, ^Ethelwalch, was bap- 
tized in Wulfhere V presence and by his persuasion ; 4 
and his submission was rewarded by a gift of two 
outlying settlements of the Jutes — the Isle of Wight 
and the lands of the Meonwara along the South- 
ampton Water, which we must suppose had been 
previously torn from Wessex by the arms of the 
Mercian king. 

The Mercian supremacy, which thus reached from Theodore 
the Humber to the Channel, and stretched as far Britain. 
westward as the Wye, while on the eastern coast 
East Anglia and Kent, though still independent, lay 
helpless and isolated in its grasp, was thus the main 
political fact in Britain when Theodore landed on its 
shores. He came with a clear and distinct aim — 
the organization of the English dioceses, the group- 

1 E. Chron. a. 661. 

2 Wini bought the bishopric of London from Wulfhere (Bseda, 
Hist. Eccl. iii. 7). For Essex, see Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 30. 

3 Malmesbury, Gest. Pontif. ed. Migne, col. 151 5. For the Chert- 
sey charters, see article on " Erkenwald," by Stubbs, in Dictionary of 
Christian- Biography, vol. ii. 

4 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 13. 



, 20 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. me of these subordinate centres round the see of 

The Canterbury, and the bringing the Church which 

Mdthe was ^ 1US organized into a fixed relation to Western 

Kingdoms. Christendom through its obedience to the see of 

659-680. Rome. With this purpose he spent the three years 
which followed his arrival, from 669 to 672, in jour- 
neying through the whole island. 1 Wherever he 
Went he secured obedience to Rome by enforcing 
the Roman observance of Easter and the other 
Roman rites, while his very presence brought about 
for himself a recognition of his primacy over the 
nation at large. As yet no archbishop had crossed 
the bounds of Kent, and to the rest of Britain the 
primate at Canterbury must have seemed a mere 
provincial prelate like the rest. But the presence 
of Theodore in Northumbria, in Mercia, in Wessex 
alike, the welcome he everywhere received, the rev- 
erence with which he was everywhere listened to, 
at once raised his position into a national one. 2 
" He," says Baeda, " was the first of the archbishops 
whom the whole English Church consented to 
obey;" 3 and everywhere he went he asserted this 
new position of the primacy by an ordering, though, 
as we shall see, only a preliminary ordering, of the 
English dioceses. 

First or- Some ordering was absolutely needful. So great 

dering of o J o 

dioceses, a confusion had been produced by the contest be- 
tween the churches that to hot partisans on either 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2 : " Peragrata. insula tota, quaquaversum 
Anglorum gentes morabantur." 

2 " Nam et libentissime ab omnibus suscipiebatur atque audieba- 
tur " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2). 

3 " Isque primus erat in archiepiscopis, cui omnis Anglorum Ec- 
clesia manus dare consentiret" (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2). 




Stanford's Ucvgraphi isstiw! 



, 2 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. side some of the English bishops seemed no bishops 
The at all; and Wilfrid, when named to the see of York, 
ancuhe had cast an open slur on the validity of his fellow- 
Kingdoms. p re l a tes' orders by crossing over the Channel to seek 
659-690. consecration from the bishops of Gaul. 1 Nor was 
this the worst. Two of the English dioceses, those 
of Wessex and Northumbria, had for some years seen 
the presence of no bishop at all. In Wessex, King 
Cenwealh had quarrelled with Bishop Agilberct, 
driven him as a foreigner from the realm, and set 
Wini as bishop in his stead. Then in 666 he had 
in turn driven Wini from his see, and left Wessex 
without any bishop at all. 2 On the other hand, 
Wilfrid, who had gone to Gaul for his consecration, 
had delayed his return so long that Oswiu set Cead- 
da as bishop in his place ; and after three years' re- 
tirement at Ripon he had withdrawn to the south, 
and was actually administering the vacant diocese 
of Kent when Theodore arrived there. 3 Wilfrid, 
however, was now placed in his northern diocese, 
and Leutherius, a nephew of Agilberct, was drawn 
from Gaul to fill the bishopric of the W T est Saxons, 4 
while Theodore solved the vexed question of their 
disputed orders by reconsecrating Bisi as bishop 
over East Anglia, and Ceadda as Bishop of Mercia. 5 
Wini remained at London in his diocese of the 
East Saxons, which he had bought from Wulfhere 
in 666 ;° and the placing of his own under-bishop, 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 28. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 7. 

3 Eddi, Life of Wilfrid, cap. 14 ; Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2. 

4 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 7. 

5 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2, 3. " Denuo catholica ratione consum- 
mavit " (Flor. Wore. a. 673). 6 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 7. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 323 

Putta, at Rochester completed Theodore's first or- chap, vie 
dering of the English episcopate. The 

In the autumn of 673 this earlier work was com- andthe 
pleted by the calling together of these bishops, with Kmgdoms ' 
their leading clergy, in a council at Hertford. 1 The 659-690. 
decrees of this council formed a further step in The- Council of 
odore's work of settlement, for by them each bishop 
with his clergy was restricted within the limits of 
his own diocese, and the free wandering of the earlier 
English mission bishops over the face of the country 
was brought to an end. 2 A yet more important 
canon enacted that this synod at Hertford should be 
but the first of a series of such synods, and that the 
bishops should meet each year at the close of July 
in a spot which bore the name of Cloveshoe. 3 It is 
as the first of these assemblies that the Council of 
Hertford is so important in our history. The syn- 
ods to which its canons gave birth not only exert- 
ed an important influence on the Church itself, but 
they exerted a yet more powerful influence upon 
the nation at large. At every important juncture 
the new bishops gathered round their primate from 
every quarter of England, to take counsel and frame 
canons for the rule of the Church at large. They 
met, not as Northumbrian or Mercian or Saxon 
bishops, but as bishops of a national Church. These 
meetings were, in fact, the first of our national gath- 
erings for general legislation ; for it was at a much 



1 Wini, however, was not present at this council. 

2 For Council of Hertford, see Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, vol. 
iii. pp. 1 18-122. 

3 For the various localities to which this name has been assigned, 
see Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, vol. iii. p. 122, note. 



^24 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. later time that the Wise Men of Wessex, or North- 

The umbria, or Mercia learned to come together in the 

aJuhe Witenagemote of all England. The synods which 

Kingdoms. Theodore convened as religiously representative of 
659-690. the whole English nation led the way by their ex- 
ample to our national Parliament; while the canons 
which these councils enacted, though carefully avoid- 
ing all direct intermeddling with secular matters, 
pointed the way to a national system of law. How 
strong an influence this work would exert on Eng- 
lish feeling, the next hundred years were to show. 
It was in vain that during that period state after 
state strove to build up the fabric of a national 
unity by the power of the sword. But in spite of 
their failure the drift towards unity grew more and 
more irresistible. If England could not find its 
national life in the supremacy of Northumbria or 
Mercia, it found it in the Church ; and amid the 
wreck of kingdoms the power of the Church grew 
steadily greater, because the Church alone expressed 
the national consciousness of the English people. 1 

The school l n the journeys of these three years throughout 
bury. Britain, Theodore had found a companion and fel- 
low-worker in his friend Hadrian. But he found in 
him a fellow-worker in more than this task of organ- 
ization. Both of the friends were famous for their 
knowledge as well as their piety, 2 and one of their 
earliest efforts seems to have been to gather a school 

1 For the work of Theodore, and the character of the new English 
Church, see Stubbs, Const. Hist. vol. i. chap. viii. 

2 The Pope, in a synodical letter, calls Theodore "archiepiscopum 
et philosophum." Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 140. 
" Literis sacris simul et ssecularibus abundantur ambo erant in- 
struct " (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



325 



at Canterbury. As yet the knowledge which came chap.vu. 
in the train of the new faith had filtered into Britain The 
through the wandering Irishmen, half-scholars, half- an ^tL 
missionaries, who settled in lonely spots, and then Km g doms - 
eked out their living by the learners they drew 659-690. 
about them. 1 Such teaching, however, was neces- 
sarily wanting in permanence ; and a new and set- 
tled form was given to English education by the es- 
tablishment of such a school as that of Canterbury. 
Though its main teaching was in subjects that re- 
lated to the knowledge either of the Bible or of the 
services of the Church, yet this scheme of education 
proved broad enough to embrace the astronomy, the 
arithmetic, and the poetic art of the time, as well as 
a knowledge of the Greek and Latin tongues. In 
its Greek teaching, indeed, the school was fortunate, 
for the knowledge of Greek was fast fading away 
from the Western world ; and where it still lingered, 
instruction in it had died down into the mastering 
of a list of words, without knowledge of its grammar 
or its literature. But Greek was the native tongue 
Of Theodore ; and though Hadrian was by birth an 
African, he had lived long enough in Southern Italy, 
where Greek was still a living tongue, to be as skilled 
a master of it as of Latin. 2 How thorough their 
teaching in both languages was is shown by the 
fact that sixty years afterwards Baeda found men 
who had been trained in the school of Canterbury 



1 Thus Maidulf, " deficientibus necessariis scholares in discipula- 
tum accepit, ut eorum liberalitate tenuitatem victus corrigeret." 
Malm. Vit. Aldhelmi (Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 3). 

2 " Grsecse pariter et Latinse linguae peritissimus " (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. 
iv. 1). 



326 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. w ho knew Latin and Greek as perfectly as their 

The own English tongue. 1 
andtSe But the influence of this school on the develop- 

Kingdoms. men t of English intellect is shown more vividly by 
659-690. the fact that from it our written literature — the litera- 

Eaidheim. ture, that is, of the English in Britain — took its birth. 
With one scholar, Eddi, who followed Wilfrid to 
York, began the prose literature of Northern Brit- 
ain ; with another, Ealdhelm, began, at an even ear- 
lier date, the whole literature of the South. Eald- 
helm 2 was a kinsman of the royal house of Wessex, 
and probably a son of one of the West-Saxon kings. 
If, as seems likely, he was born in the middle of the 
seventh century, he must have already reached man- 
hood when the school was set up at Canterbury ; 
and his earlier training was due to Maidulf, an Irish 
wanderer who had sought a spot for his hermitage 
in the woodlands of Northern Wessex, and who was 
gathering scholars there from among its thegns. 
But it was from Hadrian and Theodore that Eald- 
helm drew the intellectual impulse which he com- 
municated to the scholars who gathered round him 
when he returned to his home at Malmesbury. He 
had become a master of all the knowledge of his 
day, and the rising scholar-world of Kent and North- 
umbria welcomed his Latin poems and prose, where 
a real quickness of wit and perception of natural beau- 
ty struggled with a fatal luxuriance of metaphor and 

1 " Indicio est quod usque hodie supersunt de eorum discipulis, 
qui Latinam Grsecamque linguam aeque ut propriam in qua nati 
sunt, norunt " (Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 2). 

2 Ealdhelm's Life by Fabricius is printed by Giles, Opera Aldhelmi, 
p. 354 ; that by William of Malmesbury forms the fifth book of his 
Gesta Pontificum, in Wharton, Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 327 

rhetoric. 1 But to Wessex itself Ealdhelm was more chap, vh. 
than a mere scholar. He was the first singer of his The 
race. Alfred loved to tell how Ealdhelm won men and the 
to heed sacred things by taking stand as a gleeman Kmgdoms - 
and singing English songs on a bridge. 2 The songs 659-690. 
of Ealdhelm led the way in that upgrowth of popular 
poetry which was soon to fill the land with English 
verse. Creed, prayer, riddle, allegory, acrostic, Bible 
story and saint story, hero tale and battle tale, prov- 
erb and moral saw, the longing of the exile, the toil 
of the seaman, the warning of the grave, passed alike 
into rime. It was with an ever-growing stock of 
ballads that the gleeman trolled his way from fair 
to fair. A book of English songs was the prize of 
Alfred's childhood ; English songs were the first 
study of his children ; " vain songs and legends of 
heathendom " were played by Dunstan in youth 
upon his harp. A mass of poetic romance grew 
up round the later English kings ; and the story of 
^Ethelstan and Eadgar has been all but lost in the 
ballad -growth which the chroniclers of the twelfth 
century melted down into prose. 

The district in which Ealdhelm taught and sang- Conquest 

_ o <=> of the 

was one which had but lately passed into the hands Avon 

basin. 

1 Malmesbury, Life of Aldhelm (Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 7), says, 
" Graeci involute, Romani splendide, Angli pompatice dictare so- 
lent," and credits Ealdhelm with combining the merits of the three. 
" Involute " and " pompatice " fairly describe a writer who is utterly 
carried away by the new charms of style. 

2 Malmesbury, Life of Aldhelm (Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 4) : " Nati- 
vse, quoque linguae non negligebat carmina." He quotes the gleeman 
story from Alfred's Hand-book, " manualem librum regis ^Elfredi." 
" Commemorat ^Elfredus carmen triviale, quod adhuc vulgo canti- 
tatur, Aldhelmum fecisse ;" so that Aldhelm's songs were still pop- 
ular in the twelfth century. 



328 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



The 

Church 
and the 



chap. vii. of the West Saxons. We have seen that in their 
early conquests of the Marlborough Downs, they 
had been barred from further progress by a forest 
Kingdoms. t ^ at faen filled the upper basin of the Avon. This 

659-690. woodland was in itself a northern continuation of 
the great Selwood ; it extended even in the time of 
Charles the First as far as Cricklade ; at the time of 




d's Gtographical E$tab$ 



our story it still covered the site of Malmesbury; 1 
and the town of Devizes, on the brow of the hill look- 
ing down over the Avon basin, probably preserves 
in Latin form the rendering of some English name 
like " Mere" or the " Borderspot,"from which this for- 

1 " Nemoris amcenitate quod tunc temporis immensum eo loco suc- 
creverat captus, eremeticam exercuit " ( Maidulfus ). Malmesbury, 
Life of Aldhelm (Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 3). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 329 

est ran unbroken westward as far as the outskirts of chap, vn. 
Bath. 1 Though the victory of Deorham at last car- The 
ried West-Saxon territory round the northern and and* the 
western borders of this British tract, and left it run- Kingdoms ° 
ning up like a wedge into English soil, it was still 659-690. 
saved for a while from annexation by the fall of 
Ceawlin, the outbreak of anarchy among his people, 
and the fatal blows which fell upon the West Saxons 
at the hands of Eadwine and Penda. But the loss 
of the territory of the Hwiccas, the loss of the Sev- 
ern valley and the Cotswolds, forced them to fresh 
action in this quarter. Barred from any further ad- 
vance to the north, they saw even their progress 
westward threatened by the presence of Mercia on 
the lower Avon ; and it was as much to preserve 
their one remaining field of conquest as to compen- 
sate for the retreat of their frontier in other quarters 
that Cenwealh marched on this northernmost fast- 
ness of Dyvnaint. 

In 652, a battle at Bradford on the Avon made Eald ; 
the forest track his own ; 2 while a fresh fight with work. 
the Welsh, six years later, in 658, at a place called 
the Pens, cleared them from the ground along the 
upper Parret. 3 It must have been soon after this 
conquest that Maidulf, an Irish scholar monk, 4 set 
up his hermitage in the forest tract which had been 
torn from the Britons, and drew around him the first 
scholars of Wessex. Ealdhelm, as we have seen, 

1 Guest, " Boundaries of the Welsh and English Races after the 
Conquest of Bath," Archeeol. Journal, vol. xvi. pp. 11 2-1 16. 

2 E. Chron. a. 652. 

3 E. Chron. a. 658. 

4 " Eruditione philosophus, professione monachus." Malmesbury, 
Life of Aldhelm (Anglia Sacra, vol. ii. p. 3). 



230 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. W as the most famous outcome of this school; but 
The he no sooner succeeded Maidulf as abbot of the 
ancuiie little township which was growing up round that 
Kingdoms, teacher's school and church, and which still pre- 
659-690. serves his memory in its name of " Maidulf's burh," 
or Malmesbury, than he became a centre, not only 
of intellectual, but of religious and industrial, activity 
in his neighborhood. In the heart of the great 
woodland which stretched from Malmesbury to the 
Channel, he planted four new germs of social life in 
the monasteries which he established at Bradford on 
the Avon ; at Frome, on the little river which bears 
that name ; at Sherborne, on the borders of the forest 
country through which the Dorsaetas must have 
been still at this time pushing their way; and at 
Wareham, on the coast beside Poole — a point which 
shows that these invaders had already advanced at 
least thus far towards the west. The churches he 
raised at these spots are noteworthy as the first in- 
stances of building which we meet with in Wessex. 
But they had nothing of the rudeness of early work ; 
architecturally, indeed, they were superior to the 
famous churches which Benedict Biscop was raising 
at this time by the banks of the Wear. 1 So masterly 
was their construction that Ealdhelm's churches at 
Malmesbury and Sherborne were the only churches 
of this early time that were spared by the Norman 
architects after the conquest ; while the church 
which he erected on the scene of Cenwealh's victory 
at Bradford on Avon stands in almost perfect pres- 
ervation to-day. 

1 Freeman, " King Ine," Somersetshire Archaeological Proceed- 
ings, 1874, vol. xx. p. 31. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 33! 

While Ealdhelm was thus riming and building chap. vn. 
in Wessex, Theodore himself was steadily carrying The 
out the second part of his plans for the organization a ndthe 
of the Church. In the Council of Hertford the ques- Kingdoms - 
tion of the increase of the episcopate had been de- 659-690. 
bated, but left without formal decision. 1 From what The 
we find afterwards, it is probable that this absence dwells. 
of any resolve on the part of the council was owing 
to the reluctance of most of the bishops concerned 
to consent to the division of their dioceses. But 
Theodore's purpose remained unshaken, and the 
council had no sooner closed than he began to 
carry out his plans. The shape which his present 
work took, like the shape of his earlier work, was 
determined by the previous history of the English 
people. The conquest of the Continent had been 
wrought either by races such as the Goths, who 
were already Christian ; or by heathens such as the 
Franks, who bowed to the Christian faith of the na- 
tions they conquered. To this oneness of religion 
between the German invaders of the Empire and 
their Roman subjects was owing the preservation of 
all that survived of the Roman world. The Church 
everywhere remained untouched. The Christian 
bishop became the defender of the conquered Ital- 
ian or Gaul against the Gothic and Lombard con- 
queror, the mediator between the German and his 
subjects, the one bulwark against barbaric violence 
and oppression. To the barbarian, on the other 
hand, he was the representative of all that was ven- 

1 The ninth canon runs : " In commune tractatum est, ut plures 
Episcopi crescente numero fidelium augerentur, sed de hac re ad 
prsesens siluimus " (Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 120). 



332 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, vii. erable in the past— the living record of law, of letters, 
The and of art. But in Britain priesthood and people 

and tie were exterminated together. When Theodore came 
Kingdoms. ^ or g an i ze ^he Church of England, the very mem- 

65 9-69 0. orv of the older Christian Church which existed in 
Roman Britain had passed away. The first mission- 
aries to the Englishmen, strangers in a heathen land, 
attached themselves necessarily to the courts of the 
kings, who were their earliest converts, and whose 
conversion was generally followed by that of their 
people. The English bishops were thus at first roy- 
al chaplains, and their diocese was naturally nothing 
but the kingdom. The kingdom of Kent became 
the diocese of Canterbury, and the kingdom of 
Northumbria became the diocese of York. So ab- 
solutely was this the case that the diocese grew or 
shrank with the growth or shrinking of the realm 
which it spiritually represented, and a bishop of 
Wessex or of Mercia found the limits of his see 
widened or cut short by the triumphs of Wulfhere 
or of Ine. In this way, too, realms which are all 
but forgotten are commemorated in the limits of ex- 
isting sees. That of Rochester represented till of 
late an obscure kingdom of West Kent, and the 
frontier of the original kingdom of Mercia might be 
recovered by following the map of the ancient bish- 
opric of Lichfield. 

Di tf S £ l ^° ma ^ e episcopal rule and supervision a real and 

Mercian living thing over such wide spaces, it was needful 

diocese. . 

that these realm-dioceses should be broken up into 
. smaller sees ; but it was characteristic of the care 
with which Theodore sought an historical founda- 
tion for his work that even in their division he only 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 333 

fell back on the tribal demarcations which lay with- chap.vh. 
in the limits of each kingdom. Thus, when, in 673, The 
he broke up the see of East Anglia, it was by divid- ancuhe 
inor it into dioceses of the North-folk and the South- K" 1 ^ 01118 - 
folk, whose prelates were established at Dunwich 659-690. 
and Elmham. 1 He dealt in the same way with the 
huger Mercian diocese by setting a bishop over the 
Middle English with a see at Leicester; by estab- 
lishing at Worcester a bishopric for the Hwiccas of 
the lower Severn valley, and another for the far- 
off Hecanas at Hereford; while the peoples whom 
Wulfhere's sword had torn from the kingdom of the 
West Saxons, and part of whom, at least, seem to 
have been known as the South Engle, may have 
been committed to the charge of a bishop at Dor- 
chester on the Thames. 2 The see of Lichfield thus 
returned to its original form of a see of the Mercians 
proper, though its bounds on the westward now em- 
braced much of the upper Severn valley, with Chesh- 
ire and the lands northward to the Mersey. 

The division of Mercia seems to have been begun The mo- 
rn, the face of an opposition from Bishop Winfrid, movement. 
who held this vast diocese, which was only put an 
end to by Theodore's removal of him from his see in 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 5 ; Flor. Wore. a. 673. 

2 The details of this division are obscure (see Haddan and Stubbs, 
Councils, vol. iii. pp. 127-130). For Worcester we have Bseda's au- 
thority (Hist. Eccl. iv. 23), as well as for Dorchester (ibid.), though 
this is disputed by Professor Stubbs (Councils, vol. iii. p. 130, note e). 
The sees of Mercia and the Middle Angles were still both in Sexulf's 
hands as late as 678, so that the separation of the latter must be 
later than that year (Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 12). On Putta's flight 
from Rochester, in 676, Sexulf gave him possession of a church at 
Hereford, and there he died (ibid.) ; but at what exact year the act- 
ual bishopric was established we are not told. 



224 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. 675 ;' and years more had to be spent in completing 
The the whole arrangement ; but throughout Theodore 

and tL could count on the strenuous support of the king. 
Kingdoms. j t was possibly, indeed, the accession of /Ethelred, 

659-690. wno succeeded his brother Wulfhere in 675, that en- 
abled Theodore to begin his work in Mercia in that 
year. 2 ^Ethelred was a king of a temper far other 
than that of his predecessor. Though the first days 
of his reign were disturbed by a strife with Kent, 
which was sinking more and more into dependence 
on the Mercian kings, and which seems to have en- 
deavored to resume its independence on Wulfhere 's 
death, an effort that ended in fresh submission after 
the destruction of Rochester, 3 his temper was peace- 
ful and religious, and his activity mainly showed it- 
self in a planting and endowment of monastic colo- 
nies, which gradually transformed the face of the 
realm. In the monastic movement of this time two 
strangely contrasted impulses worked together to 
change the very aspect of the new England and the 
new English society. The one was the passion for 
solitude, the first outcome of the religious impulse 
given by the conversion ; a passion for communing 
apart with themselves and with God, which drove 
men into waste and woodland and desolate fen. 
The other was the equally new passion for social 
life on the part of the nation at large, the outcome 
of its settlement and well-doing on the conquered 
soil, and yet more of the influence of the new re- 
ligion, coming as it did from the social civilization 
of the older world, and insensibly drawing men to- 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 6. 2 E. Chron. a. 675. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



335 



gether by the very form of its worship and its belief, chap.vh. 
The first impulse showed itself most vividly in the The 
Irish missionaries : in Aidan's choice of a lonely and the 
island for his settlement at Lindisfarne; in Cuth- Kingdoms - 
bert's choice of a yet lonelier sand-bank for his later 659-690. 
hermitage ; in Ceadda's retirement in the quiet soli- 
tude of Lichfield ; or in Maidulf 's withdrawal to the 
woods of Malmesbury. But the close of the seventh 
century had no sooner brought with it its period of 
peace than the social impulse was quick to undo the 
work which these solitaries had done. Reverence 
for their holiness, with a desire to profit by their 
teaching, drew devotee and scholar alike around 
them ; and the little community had no sooner vin- 
dicated the new dignity which Christianity had 
given to labor by winning field from the forest, or 
meadow from the marsh, than it became the centre . 
of a yet wider attraction. The sanctity of such set- 
tlements served in these early days of the new re- 
ligion to insure for them peace and safety in the 
midst of whatever war or social trouble might be 
disturbing the country about them ; and the longing 
for a life of quiet industry, which we see telling from 
this moment upon the older English longing for 
war, 1 drew men in crowds to these so-called monas- 
teries. 2 

No settlements, indeed, could be more unlike the its results. 
monasteries of later days. A vow of obedience and 
a vow of celibacy sufficed to hold the monks them- 
selves, who formed the nucleus of each, together; and 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 3. Vit. Abbat. (Hussey's Baeda, p. 322). 

2 Thus, there were six hundred at Wearmouth soon after its es- 
tablishment. Baeda, Vit. Abbat. (Hussey's Baeda, p. 328). 



33& 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vn. the necessity of labor for their maintenance left their 
The intercourse with the settlers and dependants about 
ancuhe them as free as that of other men. So far, indeed, 
Kingdoms. were these homes from being bound by the strict 
659-690. ties of the Benedictine rule that they were often 
gathered on the loose Irish model of the family or 
the clan round some noble and wealthy person who 
sought devotional retirement. The looseness of 
their discipline, combined with a peculiar usage 
which in some cases brought monks and nuns to- 
gether under the rule of the same abbess, exposed 
these communities at a later time to grave scandals ; 
and in many cases the establishment of such a mon- 
astery was only a pretext under which a lord and his 
dependants exempted themselves from their national 
obligations of military service. 1 But even in such a 
case, the new aversion from warfare, the new long- 
ing for peaceful industry, was shown in the so-called 
monastery. Whatever were the causes, however, of 
this movement, it brought with it a transfer and re- 
adjustment of population which changed the whole 
face of the country. Here and there it revived the 
civilization of the past by bringing fresh life to the 
ruins of a Roman town. The solitude of its ruins 
drew to them a hermit, and the sanctity of the her- 
mit drew after him a crowd of disciples and settlers 
that again brought busy life to its desolation. But 
it made a more startling revolution by reclaiming 
the wilder districts which civilization and social life 
had as yet never visited at all. It broke the dreary 
line of the northern coast with settlements which 

1 Bseda, Letter to Ecgberht (Hussey's Baeda, p. 338), and Hist. 
Eccl. v. 23. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



337 



proved forerunners of some of our busiest ports. It chap.vh. 
broke the silence of waste and moor by houses like The 
those of Ripon and Lastingham. It set agricultural andthe 
colonies in the depths of vast woodlands, as at Eves- Kmgdoms 
ham or Malmesbury, while by a chain of religious 659-690. 
houses it made its way step by step into the heart of 
the Fens. 



MID - BRITAIN. 700 - 800. 




Stanford »* livograpftictU hutablight 



We can best realize the change which this move- 
ment made in Mercia by following it here and there 
across the face of the country. In the angle between 
the Cotswolds and the hills which form the eastern 
boundary of the Severn valley lay the largest of all 
the forests of Britain. The barren tract of low clays, 
indeed, which lay along the base of the Cotswolds, 

22 



Forest of 
Arden. 



338 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, vii. W as, for the most part, free from wood ; but across 
^e the Avon, from the site of our Rugby to that of our 
and the Evesham, ran a line of dense woodland which stretch- 
King^omE. ec j awa y northward without a break to the bounds 
659-690. f Cannock Chase, 1 and extended eastward and west- 
ward from the valley of the Severn to the limits of 
our Leicestershire. 2 This was Arden, the forest into 
whose depths Shakspere could stray, centuries later, 
from his childhood's home at Stratford, and in whose 
glades his fancy placed the scene of one of his love- 
liest dramas. 3 But in Shakspere 's day its mass was 



1 A line of hamlets which bear the name of " Woodend," stretch- 
ing across Staffordshire, just south of Walsall and Wolverhampton, 
marks roughly the northern border of Arden. Camden marks one 
by Shenstone, just south of Lichfield, another close to Walsall, and 
a third at Sedgley, south of Wolverhampton. But beyond these 
the ground was still richly studded in Camden's day with outliers 
of the " Wooland," Walsall Wood, Essington Wood, Kingswood, 
and the like, which show its extension at an earlier time. See map 
of Staffordshire in Camden's Britannia (ed. 1753), vol. i. p. 633. 

2 As late as Elizabeth's time (and Shakspere's time) our War- 
wickshire was parted into the " Feldon " and the " Wooland," or 
Wood-land — the first a tract of open pastures between the Avon 
and the Cotswolds ; the second, to the north of the Avon, though 
not without "pastures and cornfields," yet in the main "clothed 
with woods " (Camden, Britannia, ed. 1753, vol. i. pp. 598, 606). The 
clearing of the " Wooland " was, in fact, only due to the subsequent 
growth of its iron-works, which " destroyed such prodigious quan- 
tities of wood that they laid the country more open, and by degrees 
made room for the plough," so that "whereas within the memory 
of man they were supplied with corn from the Feldon," writes Gib- 
son, in 1753, they now grew more corn than they needed. By a 
curious correlative change, as the soil thus cleared proved far more 
fertile than the clay lands of the Feldon, the latter, whose " fertile 
fields of corn and verdant pastures" had delighted Camden's eye in 
1606, had by Gibson's day become almost wholly pasture land. 

3 As You Like It, act i. sc. i. " Oliver. Where will the old duke 
live ? Charles. They say he is already in the forest of Arden, and 
a many merry men with him ; and there they live like the old Robin 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 339 

broken everywhere by the clearings of the Warwick- chap.vh. 
shire men ; towns were planted in the very heart of The 
its woodlands, and the miner had thinned its clumps and the 
with his forges. No such settlement or traces of Kingdoms, 
man broke its solitude when the West Saxons gazed 659-680. 
on the skirts of this huge forest after their victory at 
Deorham. Even the great roads of the island re- 
frained from piercing it, though three of the main 
lines of communication through Britain ran along its 
edges. The Fosse Road traversed the open clays 
between the Avon and the Cotswolds. The Wat- 
ling Street struck along its northwestern border 
from our Rugby to Tamworth. Even the Ryknield 
Way, which was probably a mere track-way of the 
earliest times, crept along the western border of the 
forest beneath the slopes of the Lickey Hills, and 
only struck across it in its northern and narrower 
portion past the site of the later Birmingham to the 
plain of the Tame. 

In the broken and volcanic country along the Evesham. 
northern border of Arden, there was nothing as yet 
to show the existence of those mineral treasures 
which nowadays make this district lurid night and 
day with the glare of iron-foundries, and hideous 
with their cinder-heaps. All was still wild forest- 
land where the little settlement of Wolverhampton 
told of the wolves who carried off the farmers' 
sheep and kine into the thickets ; while further in 
its depths, unconscious of its after-greatness, lay the 
little "ham" of the Beormingas, our Birmingham. 

Hood of England. They say many young gentlemen flock to him 
every day, and fleet the time carelessly, as they did in the golden 
world." 



340 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, vir. It was only on its southeastern border, in fact, that 
The life and industry as yet touched this woodland. Here, 
and tie between the forest edge and the slopes of the Cots- 
Kingdoms. wo lds, the Avon made its way to the Severn valley, 
659-690. and along the vale of the Avon were scattered a 
few early settlements. Coventry, indeed, was not to 
rise for centuries on its waters ; but Kenilworth and 
Leamington were, no doubt, even now quiet town- 
ships in this district; the tribe of the Wearingas 
must have already set up that " wick " of their own 
which was to give its name of Wearingawick, or 
Warwick, to the whole tract when it became shire 
land ; Stratford marked the place where the Roman 
road passed the river by its paved ford on its way 
to the west ; and a little onward a " vill " of the 
Hwiccan or Mercian kings was rising beside the 
ruined walls and towers which were all that re- 
mained of the Roman Alcester. Heathendom must 
still have lingered in the mighty woodland .when 
Bishop Ecgwine of Worcester carried the Gospel 
into its depths ; and we may perhaps see Woden- 
worshipping miners at Alcester in the daemons of 
his legend, who drown the preacher's voice with the 
din of their hammers. But in spite of their ham- 
mers Ecgwine's preaching left a lasting trace be- 
hind it. The bishop heard how a swineherd, com- 
ing out of the dark forest into a sunny glade, saw 
forms which were possibly those of the Three Fair 
Women of the old German mythology, seated round 
a mystic bush, and singing their unearthly song. In 
Ecgwine's fancy, these women transformed them- 
selves into a vision of the Mother of Christ ; and the 
silent glade soon became the site of an abbey dedi- 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 34 1 

cated to her, and of a town which sprang up un- chap, vh. 
der its shelter — the Evesham which was to be hal- The 
lowed in after -time by the fall of Earl Simon of andSe 

Leicester. 1 Kingdoms. 

Wilder even than the western woodland was the 659-690. 
desolate fen -country on the eastern border of the The fen. 
kingdom which stretched from the " Holland," the 
sunk, hollow land of Lincolnshire, to the channel of 
the Ouse, a wilderness of shallow waters and reedy 
islets, wrapped in its own dark mist-veil, and tenanted 
only by flocks of screaming wild-fowl. Here, through 
the liberality of King Wulfhere, rose, on the western 
border of the great morass, the Abbey of Medesham- 
stead, a community which grew in after-time into 
our Peterborough. On its northern edge an obscure 
hermit, Botulf, founded a little house which, as ages 
went by, became our Botulf s town, or Boston. 2 Fur- 
ther in the fen itself the queen of Ecgfrid, ^Ethel- 
thryth or /Etheldreda, found a refuge from her 
husband in the low rise amidst its waters which is 
crowned nowadays with the noble minster of Ely. 3 
It was in the very heart of the fen that Guthlac, a 
youth of the royal race of Mercia, sought a refuge 



1 The abbey was founded in 709 (Haddan and Stubbs, Councils, 
iii. 278 et seq.). A life of Ecgwine may be found in Macray's Chron- 
icle of Evesham ; but the rendering of the figures in his vision as 
the " Three Women " is a doubtful suggestion of Mr. Wright. For 
the chronological difficulties of the story, see Stubbs, Diet. Christ. 
Biog., art. " Ecgwine," vol. ii. p. 62. 

2 Botulf was visited about 670 by Ceolfrid, afterwards Abbot of 
Wearmouth (Anon. Hist. Abbatum). Baeda, Opera Minora (ed. Ste- 
venson), p. 319. 

3 For Ely and its name, see Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 19, where he 
gives the story of ^Etheldreda. 



<,a 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vn. from the world in the solitude of Crowland. 1 The 
The early life of Guthlac 2 marks the wild barbarism of 
and the the times. He spent it after the fashion of young 
Kingdoms. warr i orS) m private feuds, in sacking and burning 
659-690. town and homestead, and carrying off booty from 
his foes. Suddenly as he lay sleepless in the forest 
among his sleeping war band, there rose before him 
the thought of his crimes and of the doom that 
waited on him. Such thoughts were stirred in many 
hearts, no doubt, by the new Christian faith ; but in 
none did they find a quicker answer. The birds 
waking with the dawn only roused his comrades to 
hear Guthlac's farewell. At the Abbey of Repton, 
the burying-place as yet of the royal line of Mercia, 
he shore off the long hair which marked the noble ; 
and then, moved by the life of hermit saints which 
he read there, betook himself to the heart of the fen. 
Its birds became his friends ; they perched unhin- 
dered on shoulder and knee, and rested in the thatch 
that covered the little cell he had hollowed out in 
what seems to have been a plundered burial-ground. 
" He who in cleanness of heart is one with God, all 
things are one with him," commented the recluse ; 
" he who denies himself the converse of men wins 
the converse of birds and beasts and the company 
of angels." But it was harder than Guthlac fancied 
to escape the converse of men. His solitude was 
broken by crowds of devotees — by abbot and monk, 
by thegn and ceorl — as they nocked over the fen to 
the solitary's cell ; and so great was the reverence 

1 For Crowland, even in the sixteenth century, see Camden's 
Brittania (ed. 1753), vol. i. p. 551. 

2 The name of Guthlac was that of his house, the Guthlacings. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 343 

which he won that, two years after his death, the chap.vn. 
stately abbey of Crowlarid was raised over his tomb. The 
Earth was brought in boats to form a site ; the SdSe 
buildings rested on oaken piles driven into the Kin g doms - 
marsh, a stone church replaced the hermit's cell, 659-690. 
and the toil of the new brotherhood changed the 
pools around them into fertile meadow-land. 1 

If we turn from the Fens to the Thames valley, S he 

... . r Thames 

we see the new religion gathering new centres of valley. 
social life along the line of the great river. A wild 
legend, the legend of St. Frideswide, first gives us a 
glimpse in the midst of the eighth century of the 
future Oxford, as yet, no doubt, but a few fishermen's 
huts creeping up along the line of the later " Fish 
Street" from the ford across the Thames to the 
little monastery that had risen over the saint's re- 
mains; 2 and a little further along the river, in some 
meadows be'side its southern bank, there had already 
risen in the later days of Ealdhelm a religious house 
which was to acquire a far different celebrity from 
that of Frideswide, the abbey under whose walls 
grew up the town of Abingdon. 3 As Abingdon 



1 Guthlac's Life is printed in Acta Sanct. Boll, at April n. 

2 Frideswide is not mentioned by Baeda, but an Anglo-Saxon cat- 
alogue of saints states her to have been buried at Oxford, and 
Domesday shows her canons to have been long established there. 
Her story first appears in Malmesbury, and is probably a genuine 
tradition. The expanded life by Prior Philip may be found in the 
Bollandist Acta Sanctorum, Oct., vol. viii. p. 560 ; and see article in 
Dictionary of Christian Biography, vol. ii. p. 563. 

3 The early history of Abingdon is obscure. Hean, a nephew of 
Cissa, an under-king of our Berkshire in the days of Centwine, 
seems to have founded the original monastery on folk -land at 
Abba's dun, "where Chilswell farm now stands," says Professor 
Bright, Early English Church History, p. 262. Ine, however, took 



•3 44 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. rose into light, the brief greatness of a spot lower 
The down the river was passing away. The present vil- 
SJdthe * a & e °f Dorchester probably occupies the site of a 
Kingdoms. R om an borough ; and the dyke that guarded the 
659-690. town, as well as a huge hill-fort of the Britons in its 
neighborhood, shows that the spot had been of im- 
portance in very early times. Here Birinus fixed 
the bishop's stool of the West Saxons ; and here, in 
the presence of Oswald, the West-Saxon king sub- 
mitted to baptism. But the removal of the West- 
Saxon bishopric to Winchester gave a fatal blow to 
the place ; and even a later transfer to it of the Mer- 
cian bishopric failed to raise it into importance. Yet 
further along the Thames valley the great founda- 
tion of Henry the First had not begun the transfor- 
mation of the settlement of the Readings into our 
thriving Reading; nor was Windsor to be crowned 
for centuries yet by the group of royal and ecclesi- 
astical buildings which preserves the glories of the 
Plantagenets. But the bishops of the East Saxons 
were already establishing their home at Fulham. In 
the little house amid the marshes of the Tyburn 
which claimed King Saeberct as its founder lay a 
germ of the coming Westminster; and if no great 
abbey within its walls, besides its own church of 
St. Paul, marked the devotion of London, that of 
its bishop Erconwald was shown by his two founda- 
tions — one for himself at Chertsey, the first trace of 
life we have as yet encountered in the new Surrey ; 
the other for his sister ^Ethelburh at Barking. The 
legends of Barking, as Bseda has preserved them, 

back the land ; and when the house was refounded twenty years 
later, it was set up on its present site, then called Sheovesham. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



345 



are full of the poetry of monastic life — of those vi- chap..vh. 
sions of angelic glory, those sounds of angelic music, The 
that gave beauty to its very trivialities. Light, above and the 
all, was the plaything of this religious fancy. It was Kin ^ oms - 
the resting of an unearthly brightness on the spot 659-690. 
that guided the nuns of Barking in the choice of 
their burial-ground ; the light, they said, that was to 
receive the souls of its hand-maidens had shown the 
place where their bodies should rest till' the rising 
again. " Let your candle burn as it may," murmured 
a sister of the same house to those who watched her 
dying through the night, " it is no light of mine ; my 
light will come to me at the dawn of day !" The 
body of their dead abbess, as the nuns in vision saw 
it floating heavenward, glowed with a celestial splen- 
dor beyond the sun. 1 

In a survey of the rest of the Mercian kingdom we Mid-Brit- 
meet with little more than names ; but even names 
have a living interest when they reveal to us for the 
first time the existence of communities which have 
lived on for a thousand years since, and form actual 
elements in the England of to-day. As we pass 
from the valley of the Thames to the valley of the 
Severn, we find that a new English borough, the 
borough of Cirencester, has already sprung to life 
on the wreck of the Roman Corinium. 2 The foun- 
dation of a monastery by an under -king of the 
Hwiccas within its walls reveals to us the springing- 
up of a like new life in another of the cities which 
had been wrecked by Ceawlin's inroad, the city of 
Bath. 3 Gloucester, though we do not hear of it as 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 7, 8. 2 E. Chron. a. 628. 

3 A monastery at Bath was founded by this under-king Osric in 676. 



346 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. yet, may have been growing into being on the site 
The of the third city which defied the West-Saxon king, 
and the that of Glevum ; but the new masters of the lower 
Kingdoms. Severn valley seem to have found their centre higher 
659-680. U p the river, on the very border of the forest of 
Wyre, in a town whose existence the establishment 
of one of Theodore's bishoprics discloses to us, the 
town of Wyre-ceaster, or Worcester.' If we pass 
from the Severn to Mid-Britain itself, we find as yet 
no mention of Northampton on the upland that now 
bears its name, nor any trace of the return of life to 
the ruins of Towcester ; but Medeshamstead, as we 
have seen, was already rising where the upland 
sloped to the fen, and the little monastery of Oundle 
shows that life was pushing still higher up the val- 
ley of the Nen. Along the Trent itself we find few 
traces of the new social impulse, though Repton had 
been called to life on its upper waters by the with- 
drawal of Abbess ^Elfrida to a religious life ; and 
further along the river a like house had gathered at 
Burton. But the Mercian kings were already estab- 
lished at Tamworth ; the Pecsastan had, no doubt, 
found a centre in the North- weorthig, which has 
become our Derby, and the Middle Engle in our 
Leicester ; while on tie great rise to the south of the 
H umber we see not only communities established 
at Sidnacester and Bardney, but a new borough of 
the Lindiswaras, with a stone church founded by 
Paulinus as its spiritual centre, growing up among 
the ruins of the Roman Lindum. 2 

Such was the Mercia whose ecclesiastical organiza- 

1 Worcester was from the first the seat of the Hwiccian bishopric. 

2 Breda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 16 : " Lindocolinse civitatis." 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 347 



tion Theodore was still engaged in completing when, chap. vn. 
in 678, he was invited by King Ecgfrith to undertake The 
a like organization of Northumbrian Isolated as it S^the 
had now become from the rest of Britain, North um- Kin g doms - 
bria was far from having sunk from its old renown, 659-690. 
either in government or war. It still remained, in- Ecgfrith 
deed, first among the English states. Ecgfrith had umTria. 
succeeded his father, Oswiu, in 670 ; 2 and though he 
made no effort to reverse his father's policy as re- 
gards Southern Britain, or to attempt to build up 
again a supremacy over its states, he showed himself 
resolute to enlarge the bounds of his kingdom by 
conquests over the Welsh. The Welsh states across 
the western moors had owned, at least from Oswald's 
time, the Northumbrian supremacy ; but little actual 
advance had been made by the English in this quar- 
ter since the victory of Chester, and northward of 
the Ribble the land between the moors and the sea 
still formed a part of the British kingdom of Cum- 
bria. It was from this tract, from what we now 
know as Northern Lancashire and the Lake district, 
that Ecgfrith's armies chased the Britons in the early 
years of his reign. 3 The British clergy still fled be- 
fore the conqueror's sword, and from the sacred spots 
which they deserted large grants were made by Ecg- 
frith to the see of York— in the country between the 
Ribble and the Mersey, in Amounderness, and in 



1 Eddi, Life of Wilfrid, cap. 24 : " Theodorum cum muneribus . . . 
invitaverunt." 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 5. 

3 This conquest, like the after-conquest of the Picts, lies between 
his accession, in 670, and his strife with Wulfhere of Mercia in 675. 
See Eddi, Life of Wilfrid, cap. 20. 



348 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. Cartmell, or the vale of the Duddon,' the three dis- 

The tricts which together make up our present Lanca- 

andthe shire; 2 but there was no break in the general policy 

Kingdoms. Q f ^ e ] a ter English conquests, and the rest of the 

659-690. British population remained as tributaries on the 

soil. 3 
Triumphs gy the conquest of this western district, North um- 

over Picts . J x 

andMer- bna now stretched uninterruptedly from sea to sea 
from the southern border of Elmet as far north as 
the city of Carlisle. Carlisle is of interest as the 
first instance which we have met with of a city in 
which there seems to have been no break of munic- 

1 Wilfrid claimed for his see " ea loca sancta in diversis regioni- 
bus, quae clerus Brytannus, aciem gladii hostilis manu gentis nostrse 
fugiens, deseruit. Erat quippe Deo placabile donum, quod religiosi 
reges tarn multas terras Deo ad serviendum pontifici nostro con- 
scripserunt ; et hsec sunt nomina regionum juxta Rippel, et in 
Gaedyne, et in regione Dunutinga, et in Caetlsevum, in caeterisque 
locis " (Eddi, Life of Wilfrid, cap. 17). Mr. Raine, in a note on this 
passage of Eddi, says, " Peter of Blois, in his missing Life of Wilfrid, 
describes these districts thus : ' Scilicet Rible et Hasmundesham et 
Marchesise ' (Leland, col. ed. 1774, vol. iii. p. 1 10). By these he seems 
to mean Amounderness in North Lancashire, and the ' terra inter 
Ripham et Mersham ' (Domesday-book), the country between the 
Ribble and the Mersey." He points out, too, that if Gaedyne be 
identified with Gilling near Richmond, and Dunutinga, or, as Peter 
of Blois calls it, Duninga, with the county watered by the river 
Duddon, as well as Caetlaevum with Cartmell, we should have in 
these districts the whole of the western part of the archdeaconry 
of Richmond, and thus account for their ecclesiastical connection 
through it with the see of York. 

2 Cartmell is that district of Lancashire which, isolated from the 
rest of the county, lies north of Ulverston Bay ; while Amounder- 
ness may at this time have included the whole tract between the 
Lune and the Ribble. See Camden's Britannia (1753), vol. ii. p. 975, 
where Amounderness is made to include the Fylde. 

3 Sim. Durh., Historia de S. Cuthberto ; Twysden, Dec. Script, 
p. 69. King Ecgfrith gave " Cartmell et omnes Brittannos cum eo " 
to St. Cuthbert. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 349 



ipal life as it passed into English hands. Only a chap.vh. 
few years after its conquest by Ecgfrith, we find a The 
monastery founded there ; ' while the city itself and ^nd the 
its district became part of the possessions of the see Kin g doms - 
of Lindisfarne, 2 and it is as he stands by its Roman 659-690. 
fountain that Cuthbert hears the news of Nectans- 
mere. But the conquest of this district was quickly 
followed by fresh gains in the north, where Ecgfrith 
attacked with the same success both the Scots be- 
yond Clydesdale and the Picts over the Firth of 
Forth. 3 The war, indeed, in this quarter was forced 
on him by the Picts, who rose against the yoke of 
tribute to which they had submitted under Oswiu, 
and marched with an army which seems to have 
been gathered from their whole territory in the 
Highlands on the English border. Ecgfrith met 
the attack with a comparatively small force ; but his 
victory was so complete that, as the Northumbrian 
chronicler tells us, two rivers were filled with the 
corpses of the slain, and the Picts were reduced to 
so complete a subjection that their territory on the 
northern bank of the Forth was reckoned from this 
time as Northumbrian ground. 4 How far Ecgfrith 
would have pushed his conquests in this quarter had 
his hands been left free we cannot tell, but the war 
with the Picts was hardly over when he was forced 

1 Baeda, Life of Cuthbert, cap. 27. It seems probable that after 
Ecgfrith's death his queen entered this monastery (ibid. cap. 28). 

2 Sim. Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. i. 9. " Lugubaliam quae Luel voca- 
tur in circuitu quindecim milliaria habentem in augmentum susce- 
pit " (Cuthbertus). 

3 Eddi, cap. 21 : "Triumphos ad Aquilonem super Brittones et 
Scottos." 

* Eddi, cap. 19. 



350 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, vii. to meet a more formidable attack on his southern 

The frontier. Wulfhere, as we have seen, had carried the 

and the supremacy of Mercia not only over the whole of 

Kingdoms. Mid-Britain, but even as far as the British Channel ; 

659-690. anc j it was as the practical master of all Britain 
south of the H umber, and with a force drawn from 
every one of its peoples, that he marched on North- 
umbria with a demand of subjection and tribute. 1 
Ecgfrith, however, was as successful against the 
Mercians as against the Picts ; and though, as before, 
his army was inferior in number to that of his op- 
ponents, after a bloody encounter he drove Wulfhere 
from the field, and forced the Mercian king, in turn, 
not only to surrender the land of the Lindiswaras, 
which he had taken from Oswiu in that king's later 
days, 2 but to pay tribute to Northumbria. 3 

its monas- The death of Wulfhere, which immediately fol- 
' 'lowed this triumph, in 675, and the accession of the 
more peaceful yEthelred, removed for the time all 
pressure from the south, and left Northumbria free 
to carry on a work of industrial development, which 
was producing results even more striking than those 
which we have already watched in Mid -Britain. 
Here, as there, the movement was in name a monas- 
tic one ; but the establishment of the monastic col- 
onies which carried life and culture over the land 
was furthered in the north more than elsewhere by 

1 Eddi, cap. 20 : " Ulfharius, rex Merciorum . . . omnes australes 
populos adversum regnum nostrum concitans, non tam ad bellan- 
dum quam ad redigendum sub tributo, servili animo, non regente 
Deo, proponebat." 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 3. 

3 " Occisis innumeris regem fugavit, regnumque ejus sub tributo 
distribuit " (Eddi, cap. 20; Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iy. 12). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



351 



the enormous sweeps of waste which still made up chap, vh. 
the bulk of Northumbria. Nowhere was this waste The 
so continuous as along the eastern coast. Save at a nathe 
the passage of the Tyne, where the yElian Bridge Kmgdoms - 
must now have been dropping into decay, hardly a 659-690. 
single settlement had been made along this coast 
under the Roman rule; and though the Engle con- 
querors had planted their hams and tuns along its 
river-valleys, such as those of the Tweed or the Tyne, 
and had set a few fishing-villages along the shore, 
the bulk of the country was still untilled and un- 
claimed of man, and thus passed into the folk-land 
which lay at the disposal of the Northumbrian kings. 
Though Edinburgh had been an English fortress 
since the days of Eadwine, and we already catch 
sight of Dunbar looking out over its stormy seas, 1 
the whole space between them, north of the Lam- 
mermoor, was still folk-land in Oswald's day, when 
it was granted to the monastery at Lindisfarne. 2 It 
was from the waste country south of the Lammer- 
moor that lands almost as wide were bestowed by 
Oswiu on a monastery which Ebba was establishing 
on the coast at Coldingham, as well as on the House 
of Melrose. The whole of the pastoral country on 
the banks of the Bowmont between the forest of 
Jedburgh and the Cheviots seems to have been first 
reclaimed when it was granted by Oswiu to . Cuth- 
bert during his abode at Melrose. 3 South of the 
Tweed as far as Bamborouo;h, and reaching inland 



1 Eddi, cap. 38, where King Ecgfrith sends Wilfrid a prisoner in 
" urbem suam Dynbaer." 

2 Hist, de S. Cuthberto ; Twysden, Dec. Script, col. 68. 

3 Hodgson Hinde on " Lothian," Archseol. Journal, vol. xiv. p. 31 1. 



3 c 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, vii. as far as the valley of the Till, lay as desolate a re- 
The gion, which formed part of the domain that Oswald 
andtL carved out of his folk-land for the neighboring holy 
Kingdoms. j s ] an( j f Lindisfarne. 1 Lesser tracts were carved 
659-690. out of the district which we now call Durham, and 
which remained for centuries a wild and almost 
uninhabited moorland, for the little houses along 
its shore at Ebbchester and Hartlepool ; while the 
grants of Ecgfrith and Oswiu to Wearmouth and to 
Whitby show that the coast district preserved the 
same character away to the south ; in fact, when de- 
scribing the site which King Oidilwald gave for the 
Monastery of Lastingham in the moorlands which 
are now known as the forest of Pickering, Bseda calls 
it a place " which looked more like a lurking-place 
for robbers and a retreat for wild beasts than a habi- 
tation for man." 2 
Their sec- Qf these colonies the northernmost, save a little 

ular char- ' 

acter. house at Tyningham beside Dunbar, was the mon- 
astery which Ebba founded at Coldingham, to the 
south of the great promontory which still preserves 
her memory in its name of St. Abb's Head. Ebba 
was of the royal line, a daughter of ^Ethelfrith and 
a sister of Oswald and Oswiu; 3 and the character 
which her double house of monks and nuns took 
even during her lifetime shows how much stronger 
a part was played in these settlements by the social 
than by the religious impulse. " I have looked into 
every one's chamber and beds," a heavenly visitant 
is said to have declared to an Irish ascetic, who re- 

1 Hist, de S. Cuthberto ; Twysden, Dec. Script, col. 69. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 23. 

3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 19 ; Life of Cuthbert, cap. 10. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 353 

ported it to the abbess, "and found none but you chap. vh. 
busy about the care of the soul; since all of these t^ 
folk, both men and women, either indulge themselves ancuthe 
in sloth and sleep, or wake to commit sin. For even kingdoms, 
the cells that were built for praying or reading are 659-690. 
now converted into places of feasting, drinking, and 
talking ; while the virgins dedicated to God, whenso- 
ever they are at leisure, apply themselves to weav- 
ing fine garments." 1 A fire which swept away the 
Abbey of Coldingham was held to have been a judg- 
ment of Heaven on the worldliness of its inmates; 2 
but the tendency to create such settlements only 
grew stronger as the days went on. Under Ecg- 
frith's successors, the practice became almost uni- 
versal, among the higher nobles and thegns of the 
court, of procuring grants of folk-land under the pre- 
text of establishing a religious house, of drawing to 
them monks from other monasteries, as well as in- 
ducing some of their own servants to take the ton- 
sure and promise monastic obedience to their rule, 
while themselves often remaining laymen, and profit- 
ing by their name of abbots to escape from all obli- 
gation of military service to the realm. 3 However 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 25. 

2 For the gross moral abuses which sometimes grew out of this 
loose system of monasticism, see letters of Boniface to ^Ethelbald, 
Herefrith, and Ecgberht ; Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. pp. 

35i.357,358- 

3 In 749, ^Ethelbald of Mercia freed all monasteries and churches 
throughout his realm from taxation and service, save for the build- 
ing of bridges and the defence of strongholds (see the charter in 
Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 386) ; and the same exemp- 
tion was given in the other kingdoms. Baeda gives a detailed pict- 
ure of the abuses which resulted in his letter to Ecgberht. " At alii 
graviore adhuc flagitio, quum sint ipsi laici et nullius vitae regularis 

23 



254 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. hotly statesmen or divines might protest, from their 

The different points of view, against a practice which de- 

and the graded religion while it weakened the military and 

Kingdom?, political organization of the realm, 1 it is impossible 

659-690. n ot to see in such settlements as these an effort of 

Englishmen to free themselves from the trammels 

of their older existence and to find a more social 

and industrial life. 

Their in- Labor, indeed, first rose into honor through this 

faience on . . . . . 

labor, early monasticism. The story of Eosterwmi is typ- 
ical of the change which this movement brought 

vel usu exerciti, vel amore praediti, data regibus pecunia, emunt sibi 
sub praetextu monasteriorum construendorum territoria in quibus 
suae liberius vacent libidini, et haec insuper in jus sibi haereditarium 
edictis regalibus faciunt ascribi, ipsas quoque litteras privilegiorum 
suorum quasi veraciter Deo dignas, pontificum, abbatum, et potesta- 
tum seculi obtinent subscriptione connrmari. Sicque usurpatis sibi 
agellulis sive vicis, liberi exinde a divino simul et humano servitio, 
suis tantum inibi desideriis laici monachis imperantes deserviunt : 
imo non monachos ibi congregant, sed quoscunque ob culpam ino- 
bedientiae veris expulsos monasteriis alicubi forte oberrantes inve- 
nerint, aut evocare monasteriis ipsi valuerint ; vel certe quos ipsi de 
suis satellitibus ad suscipiendam tonsuram promissa sibi obedientia 
monachica invitare quiverint. . . . Sic per annos circiter triginta, hoc 
est, ex quo Aldfrid rex humanis rebus ablatus est, provincia nostra 
vesano illo errore dementata est, ut nullus pene exinde praefectorum 
extiterit qui non hujusmodi sibi monasterium in diebus suae prae- 
fecturae comparaverit, suamque simul conjugem pari reatu nocivi 
mercatus astrinxerit ; ac praevalente pessima consuetudine ministri 
quoque regis ac famuli idem facere sategerint " (Hussey's Baeda, 
pp. 339, 340. See also Hist. Eccl. v. 23). 

1 We see the kings resisting the excessive creation. of such houses, 
doubtless on this ground, from the beginning of the eighth century. 
Boniface, in a letter written between 744 and 747, remonstrated with 
^Ethelbald of Mercia, " quod multa privilegia ecclesiarum et monas- 
teriorum fregisses ; " and adds, " privilegia ecclesiarum in regno 
Anglorum intemerata et inviolata permanserunt usque ad tempora 
Ceolredi Regis Mercionum et Osredi Regis Deorum et Berniciorum." 
Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. pp. 354, 355. Ceolred was king 
of Mercia 709-715 ; Osred of Northumbria, 705-716. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 355 

about in men's conceptions of the dignity of toil, chap.vii. 
Eosterwini was a thegn of King Ecgfrith's who, at The 
the age of twenty -four, "laid down his arms," and, and the 
entering the monastery of Wearmouth, threw him- Kia g doms - 
self cheerfully into the toil that he found going on 659-690. 
about him. " It was a pleasure to him to be em- 
ployed along with the rest of the brethren in win- 
nowing and grinding corn, in milking the ewes and 
cows, in working in the bake-house, the garden, and 
the kitchen, and in every other occupation in the 
monastery. . . . When he went out anywhere for the 
furtherance of the business of the monastery, wher- 
ever he found the brethren at work it was his wont 
to join them forthwith in their labor, whether by 
guiding the plough-handle, or working iron with the 
forge hammer, or wielding the winnowing-fan." 1 We 
see the same new drift of feeling yet more pictur- 
esquely in the figure of Owini, a head thegn of the 
household of Ecgfrith's queen, as he stands at the 
gate of the Monastery of Lasting-ham, " clad only in 
a plain garment and carrying an axe and mattock in 
his hand, thereby intimating that he did not go to 
the monastery to live idle, as some do, but to labor." 
Once admitted as a brother, Owini carried out his 
purpose ; " for as he was less capable of meditating 
on the Holy Scriptures, so he the more earnestly 
applied himself to the labor of his hands, . . . and 
while the brethren were engaged within in reading 
he was busy without at work." 2 The mere sight of 
nobles such as these laying down the noble's arms, 
and voluntarily sharing with ceorl and serf about 

1 Vit. Abbatum, Hussey's Bseda, p. 322. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 3. 



156 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. them the labor of their hands, must have raised labor 
The itself into a new esteem among their fellow-men, and 
andt£ aided in that development of industry which was 
Kingdoms. c h an gi n g the whole face of the country. 
659-680. But the movement did more than exalt labor. To 
Their in- its social side we are indebted for the birth of our lit- 
fiU poetry n erature. While Ealdhelm was singing his songs on 
the bridge at Malmesbury, a singer of far other sort 
was building up a great English poem on the North- 
umbrian coast. 1 The most notable and wealthy of the 
religious houses of Northumbria was that of Streo- 
nashalh, an abbey which Oswiu had reared for Hild 
and the child he had vowed to God as a thank-offer- 
ing for his victory at the Winwasd. 2 The love of 
solitude and retirement which the northern Church 
drew from its Celtic founders told in the choice of 
the spot. Much of its loneliness, indeed, has now 
passed away; for sunset, as it strikes along the 
gorge of the Esk in a glory of color, lights up as 
with fire the ranks of red-tiled houses in which the 
busy seaport of Whitby clings to the slopes on 
either side of the river -mouth. But on the cliff 
above it the weather-beaten ruins of an exquisite 
abbey-church, which rose at a later time on the site 
of Hild's monastery, still stand out dark and lonely 
against the sky ; and as we look from them over land 
and sea, the solitude which she chose for her home 
comes back to us. Whitby lies hidden in its river- 
valley ; the bleak moors around are thinly threaded 
by half-buried lines of woodland, for the very trees 

1 We do not know the exact date of Caedmon's poem ; but as it 
was read to Hild, who died in 68o, it must have been composed 
some time in Ecgfrith's reign. 2 In 657 (Basda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 24). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



357 



take shelter in deep gorges which carry the moor chap. vh. 
waters to the sea. The fringe of culture that now The 
creeps along the moorland's edge, the cottages dotted a nathe 
over the distance, the fishing- hamlets huddled at Km g doms - 
the mouth of streamlets whose hollows break the 659-690. 
crumbling line of marly cliffs, the herring-boats scat- 
tered over the colorless sea, the smoke -trail of ves- 
sels on the gray horizon, hardly lessen the impres- 
sion of loneliness. As we look over the wide stretch 
of country whose billowy swells and undulations lift 
themselves dark at eventide from the mist-veil that 
lies white around them, we see again the waste in 
which Hild reared her home, its gray reaches of 
desolate water, skimmed but by the white wings of 
gull or albatross, its dark tracks of desolate moor 
silent save for the wolf's howl or the eagle's scream. 

The stern grandeur of the spot blends fitly with c<zdmon. 
the thought of the poet who broke its stillness with 
the first great song that English singer had wrought 
since our fathers came to Britain. For the memory 
that endears Whitby to us is not that of Hild or of 
the scholars and priests who gathered round her. 
Her abbey, indeed, became from the first the greatest 
foundation of the north, for Hild was the daughter 
of Hereric and the great-grandchild of ^Ella; and 
though years of change had passed by and her line 
had ceased to rule, she still drew a reverence as one 
of the last of the royal stock of Deira. Her coun- 
sel was sought even by nobles and kings ; and the 
double monastery over which she ruled became a 
seminary of bishops and priests. 1 The sainted John 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 23. 



358 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. of Beverley was among her scholars. But the name 
The which really throws glory over Whitby is the name 

and tL neither of king nor bishop, but of a cowherd of the 
Kingdoms. } 10use- I Though well advanced in years, Caedmon 

659-690. had learned nothing of the art of verse, the allitera- 
tive jingle so common among his fellows; " wherefore 
being sometimes at feasts, when all agreed, for glee's 
sake, to sing in turn, he no sooner saw the harp come 
towards him than he rose from the board and went 
homewards. Once when he had done thus, and 
gone from the feast to the stable, where he had that 
night charge of the cattle, there appeared to him 
in his sleep One who said, greeting him by name, 
' Sing, Caedmon, some song to Me.' — ' I cannot sing,' 
he answered ; ' for this cause left I the feast and came 
hither.' He who talked with him answered, ' How- 
ever that be, you shall sing to Me.' — ' What shall I 
sing ? ' rejoined Caedmon. ' The beginning of cre- 
ated things,' replied He. When the cowherd stood 
before Hild at daybreak and told his dream, abbess 
and brethren alike concluded ' that heavenly grace 
had been given him by the Lord.' They translated 
for Caedmon a passage in Holy Writ, bidding him, if 
he could, put the same into verse. The next morn- 
ing he gave it them composed in excellent verse ; 
whereon the abbess, understanding the divine grace 
in the man, bade him quit the secular habit and take 
on him the monastic life." 

CadmotCs Piece by piece the sacred story was thus thrown 
into Caedmon's poem. " He sang of the creation of 
the world, of the origin of man, and of all the history 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 24. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



359 



of Israel ; of their departure from Egypt and enter- chap.vh. 
ing into the Promised Land ; of the incarnation, The 
passion, resurrection, and ascension of Christ ; of the and the 
terror of future judgment, the horror of hell-pangs, Kingdoms - 
and the joys of heaven." To men of that day this 659-690. 
sudden burst of song seemed a thing necessarily di- 
vine. " Others after him strove to compose religious 
poems, but none could vie with him ; for he learned 
the art of poetry not from men nor of men, but from 
God." It is hard for a modern reader to enter into 
Baeda's enthusiasm, for not only are parts of the 
poems which have passed under Csedmon's name 
due to other writers, though of the same poetic 
school, but they have reached us only in fragments 
of a later West -Saxon version, 1 and their Biblical 
paraphrases are often literal and tedious. But where 
the herdsman gives the rein to his own fancy, he at 
once shows himself a great poet. He wrought no 
change, indeed, in the outer form of English song. 
His verse is like that of other singers, accented and 
alliterative, without conscious art or development, or 
the delight that springs from reflection; a verse swift 
and direct, but leaving behind it a sense of strength 
rather than of beauty, obscured, too, by harsh meta- 
phors and involved construction. But it is emi- 
nently the verse of warriors, the brief passionate ex- 

1 Save nine lines of the original opening which have been pre- 
served in an early manuscript of Baeda's History. Recent criticism 
restricts the work of Csedmon to the poem of " Genesis," assigning 
" Exodus " and "David " to a nameless successor, and the closing 
fragment known as " Christ and Satan " to an altogether later time. 
Even in the " Genesis," verses 245-851, which include the famous 
passage about Satan, are now believed to be an interpolation in 
Caedmon's work, drawn, perhaps, from a lost Old-German poem. 



360 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. pression of brief, passionate emotions. Image after 
The image, phrase after phrase, starts out vivid, harsh, 

andL and emphatic. The very metre is rough with a sort 
Kingdoms. £ se lf. violence and repression; the verses fall like 

659-690. sword -strokes in the thick of battle. His love of 
natural description, the background of melancholy 
which gives its pathos to English verse, Caedmon 
only shared with earlier singers. But the faith of 
Christ had brought in, as we have seen, new realms 
of fancy. The legends of the heavenly light, Baeda's 
story of " The Sparrow," show the side of English tem- 
perament to which Christianity appealed — its sense 
of the vague, vast mystery of the world and of man, 
its dreamy revolt against the narrow bounds of ex- 
perience and life. It was this new poetic world 
which combined with the old in the epic of Caedmon. 
On the other hand, the enthusiasm for the Christian 
God, faith in whom had been bought so dearly by 
years of desperate struggle, breaks out in long rolls 
of sonorous epithets of praise and adoration. The 
temper of the poet brings him near to the earlier 
fire and passion of the Hebrew, as the events of his 
time brought him near to the old Bible history with 
its fights and wanderings. 1 " The wolves sing their 
dread evensong ; the fowls of war, greedy of battle, 
dewy -feathered, screamed around the host of Pha- 
raoh," as wolf howled and eagle screamed round the 
host of Penda. Everywhere Caedmon is a type of 
the new grandeur, depth, and fervor of tone which 
the German race was to give to the religion of the 
East. 

1 The " Exodus," as I have said, is now assigned to another sing- 
er ; but he is of Ceedmon's school. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



361 



on art. 



English poetry, however, was far from ending with chap.vh. 
Csedmon. His successors rivalled him in grandeur, The 
and sometimes surpassed him in art. The lyrics an J the 
and eclogues of Cynewulf, 1 a minstrel at the North- Kingdoms - 
umbrian Court in the middle of the century, are 659-690. 
the noblest and most finished monuments of Old- Effect of 
English verse; and the bulk of the poems which movement 
we now possess in West-Saxon versions are held by 
modern critics to be in reality fragments of the 
poetic literature which at this time flourished so 
abundantly in Northumbria. Meanwhile the same 
impulse that gave Englishmen their earliest poetry 
brought back to Britain its art. Benedict Biscop 
had not witnessed the triumph of his party in the 
Synod of Whitby, for he had already departed on a 
fresh pilgrimage to Rome; and though he accom- 
panied Theodore on his journey to England, it was 
only at the close of a fresh pilgrimage to the shrine 
of the Apostles that he again appeared in North- 
umbria in the year 674.' Ecgfrith at once made 
him a grant from the folk-land at the mouth of the 
Wear ; but Benedict had already begun the erection 
of his monastery when he passed into Gaul to find 
masons " who could build him a church of stone after 
the Roman style." 3 Nothing shows more vividly the 
utter destruction of the Roman life in Britain than 
the fact that with Roman buildings still rising, even 

1 Hazlitt's ed. of Warton's Hist, of Engl. Poetry, vol. ii. Introd. pp. 
16, 17. 

2 The life of Benedict is given by Bseda in the opening of his 
Lives of the Abbots of Wearmouth, Hussey's Bseda, p. 316 et seq. 

3 " Gallias petens csementarios qui lapideam sibi ecclesiam juxta 
Romanorum . . . morem facerent . . . attulit " (Bseda, Vit. Abbat. 
P- 3i9)- 



362 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. if half ruined, before their eyes, the very tradition of 

The the building art had passed away, and that archi- 

andthe tecture had to be brought back to Britain as a for- 

Kmgdoms. e jg n thing. With architecture ' returned other arts. 

659-690. Glass-making was as unknown in the island as build- 
ing, and it was again from Gaul that Benedict im- 
ported glass -makers to glaze the windows of his 
church and to teach Englishmen their art. 2 It was, 
in the same way, to the sacred vessels and vestments 
which he was forced to bring from abroad that the 
English owed their knowledge of the arts of gold- 
work and embroidery, in both of which they soon 
came to excel. A later visit to Rome brought to 
their knowledge the art of painting; and the stiff 
Byzantine figures with which Benedict adorned the 
interior of his church — the ring of Apostles around 
its apse with the Virgin in their midst, the stories 
from Gospel history which lined its southern wall, 
and the Apocalyptical visions which covered its 
northern wall — whether they were paintings or mo- 
saics, are memorable as the first instances in the new 
England of an art which was to give us a Reynolds 
and a Turner. 
£j s /l°t No buildings in Northern Britain could vie with 

Wilfrid. m O 

Benedict's church at Wearmouth save the churches 
which his friend Wilfrid was raising at the same 
time in the western moorlands at Ripon, and at Hex- 
ham, in the valley of the Tyne. Work of artistic 

1 So famous did the Northumbrian architects become that they 
were called even over the Forth by King Naiton of the Picts 
(Bseda, Hist. Eccl. v. 21). 

2 " Vitri factores artifices Brittaniis eatenus incognitos . . . et An- 
glorum ex eo gentem hujusmodi artificium nosse ac discere, fece- 
runt " (Bseda, Vit. Abbat. p. 319). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



363 



restoration was as much a passion with the one as chap, vu. 
the other; and if Wilfrid had visited Gaul in part The 
for the purpose of consecration, it was in part too and the 
to gather " the builders and teachers of nearly every Kin j^° ms - 
art whom he brought with him in his train on his 659-690. 
return to Britain." 1 Through the nine years that 
followed his arrival at York, the greatness of Bishop 
Wilfrid seemed to vie with that of Ecgfrith. The 
new monastic foundations regarded themselves as 
his monasteries, and at a later time he could boast 
of the thousands of his monks ; while the Northum- 
brian thegns sent their children to be brought up in 
his household, whether with the end of their becom- 
ing clerks or of serving the king as secular nobles. 
His wealth and generosity seemed boundless. At 
one time he entertained Ecgfrith in a feast that lasted 
three days and three nights ; his gifts were lavished 
on his monasteries and clergy ; and his train, as he 
rode through the country, was like an army in its 
numbers and in the kingly splendor of its vesture 
and weapons. 2 Friendly as the relations of the king 
and bishop were at first, we can hardly wonder that 
a pomp such as this brought dissension between 
them, 3 or that Ecgfrith seized on the projects of The- 
odore as enabling him to curtail a diocese which 
stretched over the whole extent of his realm. 

In 678, Theodore appeared in Northumbria at the 

1 Eddi, cap. 14 : " Cum cantoribus ^Edde et Eonan, et caementa- 
riis, omnisque paane artis institoribus, regionem suam rediens." 

2 Eddi, cap. 24 : " Innumerum exercitum sodalium regalibus vesti- 
mentis et armis ornatum." 

3 The story of Wilfrid's friends was that the quarrel began in 
Ecgfrith 's domestic troubles with his queen ^theldreda and the 
part which Wilfrid took in them. 



364 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



king's summons, and we must presume that Wil- 
The frid's resistance to his plans was notorious, for, with- 



mdthe out waiting for his presence, the primate deposed 
Kingdoms. ]- 1 j m f rom hi s S ee, and proceeded to the division of 

659-690. his diocese. The same plan of falling back on the 

Theodore older tribal divisions was followed here as elsewhere. 

"umbria'. Eata was set at Hexham as bishop of the Bernicians, 
and Bosa at York as bishop of the Deirans, while 
Eadhed was set as bishop over the Lindiswara. 1 
After a formal protest against the primate's action, 
Wilfrid left Northumbria to carry his appeal to 
Rome, where an agent of Theodore's awaited him 
on his arrival, and the cause was formally heard and 
debated at the Papal Court. In his appeal Wilfrid 
virtually consented to a division of his diocese if 
Rome saw need of this, 2 but he claimed the annul- 
ling of the sentence of deposition as uncanonical, 
and his claim was allowed. With bulls and letters 
from the Papal See, 8 he again appeared at Ecgfrith's 
eourt, but they were rejected as having been obtained 
by bribery; 4 and, by the order of the Witan, Wilfrid 
was thrown into prison, and only released at the end 
of nine months. Even then Ecgfrith's hostility pre- 
vented his finding a refuge in either Mercia or Wes- 
sex, and he at last only succeeded in hiding himself 
behind the screen of the Andredsweald among the 
South Saxons. 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. 

2 " Et si rursus in eadem parochia, cui praefui, prsesules adhibere 
praeviderit, saltern tales jubeat praevidere promovendos, cum qui- 
bus possim, pacifica atque tranquilla inter nos concordia obtinente, 
Deo unanimiter deservire (Eddi, cap. 30). 3 Eddi, cap. 34. 

* " Diffamaverunt . . . ut pretio redempta essent scripta " (Eddi, 
cap. 34). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



365 



The South Saxons were the one English people chap.vit. 
who still remained pagan ; for though their king, The 
^Edilwalch, had been baptized at Wulfhere's bidding and tL 
some twenty years before, 1 and an Irish missionary, Kingdoms - 
Dicul, had set up a little monastery at Bosham, yet 659-690. 
no impression seems to have been made on the peo- Conversion 
pie at large. It was not the first time that Wilfrid Saxons. 
had encountered them, for on his return from his 
consecration in Gaul the ship in which he was cross- 
ing the Channel had been driven upon their shores, 
and the wild wreckers had rushed to plunder it, with 
threats of death to the crew if they resisted them. 
A priest who, standing on a high mound, strove by 
incantations to " bind the hands " of the sailors, was 
struck dead by a stone flung from the ship ; and so 
wild was the rage of the people at his fall that it was 
only after a fierce conflict that the rise of the tide, 
floating the vessel again, enabled Wilfrid and his 
men to escape to Sandwich. 2 Their wild barbarism 
was shown yet more in the famine which was rav- 
aging the country when Wilfrid now reached it. 
Rather than die tamely of hunger, forty or fifty men 
would mount a cliff, and, joining hands, fling them- 
selves together into the sea. 3 They seem not even 
to have possessed the knowledge of fishing ; and it 
was partly by the skill with which he used this means 
of allaying their wants that Wilfrid succeeded in 
bringing them over to Christianity. Those who re- 
fused had to submit to their king's command; 4 and 

1 Bssda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 13. " Eddi, cap. 13. 

3 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 13. 

4 Eddi, cap. 41 : " Quidam voluntarie, alii vero coacti regis impe- 
rio, idolatriam deserentes." 



3 66 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vn. it was in the midst of this new flock that Wilfrid re- 
The mained for some five years, in unaccustomed quiet, 
ancuiie on the land which yEdilwalch granted to him at 
Kingdoms. Selsey. 

659-690. Meanwhile Theodore completed his work in the 
Completion north by the creation of two fresh bishoprics — one 
Theodore 1 sol them at Lindisfarne, and the other far away at 
work. Abercorn, across the Firth of Forth, in the province 
of the Picts. The three years' delay before this final 
step in 682 ' was probably due to a war that sprang 
up between Mercia and Northumbria in the year 
that followed the opening of the primate's work in 
the north. The country of the Lindiswara still re- 
mained a subject of contention between the two 
kingdoms. It was assailed in 679 even by the peace- 
ful ^Ethelred, and the armies of the two kings met 
in a bloody contest on the banks of the Trent. 2 The 
strife was brought to an end by the intervention of 
Theodore; and the position which the archbishop 
had attained was shown by the acceptance, on the 
part of both states, of a treaty of peace which he 
drew up, and by the consent of Northumbria to an 
abandonment of its supremacy over the Lindiswara. 3 
Such a consent, however, shows that Ecgfrith's pow- 
er was now fatally shaken. The old troubles revived 
on his northern frontier, where the Scots of Argyle 
would seem to have received aid in some rising from 
the men of their blood across the Irish Channel, for 
in 684 the Northumbrian fleet swept the Irish shores 4 
in a raid which seemed like sacrilege to those who 
loved the home of Aidan and Columba ; and where, 

1 Basda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. 2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 21. 

3 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 12. * Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 26. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



367 



in 685, a rising of the Picts forced Ecgfrith's army chap.vh. 
again to cross the Firth of Forth. The 

A sense of coming ill weighed on Northumbria, and the 
and its dread was quickened by a memory of the Km !^! ms " 
curses which had been pronounced by the Irish bish- 659 ~ 690 - 
ops on the king in vengeance for the ravages of his Mctans- 
fleet. Nowhere was this sense of coming ill more 
vivid than in the mind of Guthbert. Cuthbert had 
remained at Lindisfarne through a great secession 
which followed on the Synod of Whitby, 1 and be- 
come prior of the dwindled company of brethren, 2 
now torn with endless disputes, against which his 
patience and good-humor struggled in vain. Worn 
out at last, he fled to a little island of basaltic rock, 
one of a group not far from Ida's fortress of Bam- 
borough, strewn, for the most part, with kelp and 
sea-weed, the home of the gull and the seal. 3 In the 
midst of it rose his hut of rough stones and turf, dug 
deep into the rock, and roofed with logs and straw. 
It was the growing reverence for his sanctity that 
dragged Cuthbert back, after years of this seclusion, 
to fill the vacant see of Lindisfarne. 4 He entered 
Carlisle, which the king had bestowed upon his bish- 
opric, at a moment when all were waiting for news 
of Ecgfrith's campaign ; and as he bent over a Ro- 
man fountain which still stood unharmed among 
the ruins of Carlisle, the anxious bystanders thought 
they caught words of ill - omen falling from the 
old man's lips. " Perhaps," Cuthbert seemed to 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 26. 

2 Bseda, Life of Cuthbert, cap. 16. 

3 Bseda, Life of Cuthbert, cap. 17 et seq. 
* Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 28. 



3 68 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vii. murmur, "at this very hour the peril of the fight is 

The over and done." " Watch and pray," he said, when 

and tL they questioned him on the morrow; "watch and 

Kingdoms. p ra y" j n a f ew ^ays more a solitary fugitive, es- 

659-690. caped from the slaughter, told that the Picts, under 
Bruidi, their king, had turned desperately to bay as 
the English army entered Fife ; and that Ecgfrith 
and the flower of his nobles lay, a ghastly ring of 
corpses, on the far-off moorland of Nectansmere. 1 

Theodore's Terrible as was the blow to Northumbria, it re- 
moved the last difficulty in Theodore's path. He 
was now drawing near the close of his life, and anx- 
ious, ere he died, to secure his work of organization 
by the reconciliation of the one prelate who still op- 
posed it. Wilfrid, too, was backed by Rome ; and 
to set at nought the judgment of Rome must have 
seemed to the primate a practical undoing of his 
earlier efforts to bring about the submission of Brit- 
ain to the Papal See. The personal hostility of 
Ecgfrith had hitherto stood in the way of any meas- 
ures of conciliation ; but on his fall at Nectansmere 
Theodore at once summoned Wilfrid to a confer- 
ence at London, and a compromise was arranged be- 
tween the two prelates. By the intercession of the 
primate with the new Northumbrian king, Alchfrid, 2 
Wilfrid was restored to the see of York ; but the 
work of Theodore in the north was left intact, for 
the see to which Wilfrid returned was simply that 
of the Deiri, 3 while the Bernician sees of Lindisfarne 

1 Boeda, Life of Cuthbert (Op. Min., Stevenson), cap. 27. Sim. 
Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. (Twysden, Dec. Script.), i. 9. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 19. 

3 See Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, iii. 171, note. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



369 



and Hexham remained in the hands of their former chap.vh. 
occupants. 1 The submission of Wilfrid was the last The 
success of Theodore in his plan of organization ; it and tL 
was soon followed, indeed, by the primate's death, in Kin g doms - 
690. His work, as we have seen, had been simply 659-690. 
an organization of the episcopate, for with the sta- 
tion or revenues of the lower clergy the archbishop 
does not seem to have dealt. But when once the 
broad outlines of this organization had been laid 
down in his arrangement of dioceses, the internal 
development of the English Church followed the 
general mode of other churches. The settlement of 
the episcopate was succeeded during the next hun- 
dred years by the development of a parish system. 
The loose system of the mission-station, the monas- 
tery from which priest and bishop went forth on 
journey after journey to preach and baptize, as Ai- 
dan went forth from Lindisfarne, or Cuthbert from 
Melrose, naturally disappeared as the land became 
Christian. The missionaries became settled clergy. 
The township, or group of townships, which fell 
within the holding or patronage of an English noble 
or landowner became the parish, and his chaplain its 
parish priest, as the king's chaplain had become the 
bishop, and the kingdom his diocese. A settled 
revenue and a fixed code of law were the other press- 
ing needs of the ecclesiastical order ; and at the close 
of the eighth century a source of permanent endow- 
ment for the clergy was found in the revival of the 
Jewish payment of tithes, and in the annual gift to 
Church purposes of a tenth of the produce of the 

1 Eddi, cap. 43, 44. 
24 



,~ THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vii. soil ; while discipline within the Church itself was 
The provided for by an elaborate code of sin and pen- 

2a the ance, 1 in which the principle of compensation which 
Kingdoms. j a y a {- foe roo t f Teutonic legislation crept into the 

659-690. relations between God and the soul. 

1 The first English penitential is that of Theodore, which may be 
found in Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, iii. 173, etc. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^71 



CHAPTER VIII. 

THE THREE KINGDOMS. 
690-829. 

For the next hundred years, from the death of Political 

<-t->i 1 1 • r -r- 1 1 1 /— 'i 1 disunion 

ineodore to the accession of Ecgberht, the Church of Britain. 
which the primate had moulded into shape exercised 
an ever-deepening influence on English feeling. In 
spite of the continuance of political disunion, the 
drift towards a national unity grew more and more 
irresistible. If England could not find a national 
life in the supremacy of any of its states, it found 
such a life in the Church ; and while the energies of 
its secular powers were wasted in jealousy or strife, 
the weight of the Church which embraced them all 
became steadily greater. But throughout the whole 
of this period it was the Church alone which ex- 
pressed this national consciousness. Politically, the 
hope of a national union grew fainter with every year, 
and at the moment of Theodore's death such a hope 
seemed almost at an end. Northumbria had defi- 
nitely sheered off into provincial isolation ; and the 
event which marked the close of Theodore's pri- 
macy — the revival of the West Saxons — completed 
that parting of the land between three states of near- 
ly equal power out of which it seemed impossible 
that unity could come. 

Since their overthrow at Faddiley, a hundred 



072 THE MAKING OF ENGLAN',. 

chap. vm. years before, the West Saxons had been weakened 
The by anarchy and civil war. So terribly had their 
Kingdoms, strength been broken that even the Britons had in 
690^829 turn assailed them, while both of the rival English 
ti~w P owers na d attacked and defeated them. Eadwine 
Saxom. had routed them with a great slaughter. Penda had 
not only routed them, but taken from them their 
lands along the lower Severn. Wulfhere had car- 
ried on the struggle with the same success : he had 
torn from them the supremacy over Essex and Lon- 
don, which they had won after the wreck of ^Ethel- 
berht's overlordship, and then, pushing across the 
Thames, had mastered the West-Saxon district of 
Surrey to the south of it. But, in spite of these 
losses, the real strength of the Gewissas had been in 
no way lessened. Their defeats had been simply 
owing to their internal divisions, and these divisions 
never broke that oneness which was the special 
characteristic of their national life. Mercia had 
been made by the fusion of many different states, 
and even Northumbria had been created by the 
forced union of two warring peoples. But Wessex 
had grown into being through the simple extension 
over its surface of one West -Saxon people; and 
when divisions rent it asunder, they were divisions, 
not in the body of the people itself, but simply in its 
kingly house. Each fragment of Welsh ground, as 
it was won, seems to have been made into an under- 
kingdom for some one of the royal kin ; and it was 
the continual struggle of these under-kings against 
the ruler whom they owned as the head-king of the 
"race — a struggle begotten, no doubt, from the yet 
more fatal contest of the houses of Ceawlin and 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 273 

Cutha for the head-kingship itself — which distracted cha p- vin. 
the energies of the West Saxons. 1 The 

But whenever these causes of distraction were re- Kingdoms, 
moved, each interval of order showed that the war- 69 ^ 2 9. 
like visfor of the people was as srreat as of old. A „ — , . 

° x 1 & Revival of 

short restoration of tranquillity under Cenwealh suf- Wessex. 
ficed, as we have seen, to give them back their supe- 
riority over the Britons, and to push their frontier 
to the Parret. 2 A second interval of order in 682 
strengthened King Centwine to drive the Britons as 
far as the Quantocks. And at this moment a third 
rally of the Gewissas enabled them to turn on their 
assailants to the east, and again, after a few years' 
struggle, to take rank with the two rival powers of 
Britain. Losses and gains, indeed, had strangely al- 
tered the aspect of Wessex since the days of Ceaw- 
lin. In those days its western border stopped at 
Selwood and the valley of the Frome, while its fut- 
ure extension pointed northward from the territory 
it had won on the Cots wolds and the Severn valley 
towards the valleys of the Weaver and the Dee. But 
in the years that had passed since Ceawlin's fall, not 
only had any extension of Wessex in this direction 
become impossible, but she had actually lost the ter- 
ritory of the Hwiccas, and her northern frontier ran 
along the Avon by Bath to the upper valley of the 
Thames. The only part of Central Britain which 
she preserved at this time was the district of the 
Four Towns — a district equivalent to our Oxford- 
shire and Buckinghamshire; while on the east she 

1 Freeman's' " Ine," pt. i., Somersetshire Archaeol. Proceedings, 
vol. xviii. 

2 E. Chron. a. 652, 658, 682. 



•2-m THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vui. had lost Surrey and the Isle of Wight, and had been 
The even forced to cede to the Mercian king the little 
Kingdoms. Jutish districts of the Meonwaras, on the Southamp- 
69 ~ 39 ton Water. It seemed as if her extension could now 
— be only to the southwest; and in this quarter the 
conquests of Cenwealh and Centwine, carrying their 
frontier in this region as far as the Quantocks, had 
already added to Wessex a reach of territory whose 
extent and fertility did much to compensate for the 
losses elsewhere. 
its con- But the West Saxons were far from consenting to 
Southern be permanently shut in on the east by the border- 
line that Wulfhere had drawn round them. When 
Ceadwalla, a king of Ceawlin's line, mounted the 
West-Saxon throne in 685, ] and, after crushing the 
rival under-kings of the House of Cerdic, gathered all 
the Gewissas beneath his sway, the strength of his 
realm was at once seen in the rapidity with which it 
broke through this frontier. In some months of 
fierce fighting, Ceadwalla again set up the West- 
Saxon supremacy over Sussex, and made the Isle of 
Wight his own after a massacre of its inhabitants. 2 
From Sussex, Ceadwalla pushed on to Kent ; but 
his attempt to extend his rule over all Southern 
Britain met with a more luckless issue. He was 
himself repulsed in a first campaign ; a second saw 
his brother Mul burned in a house which he was 

1 E. Chron, a. 685. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 15, 16. If we accept Malmesbury's state- 
ment (Gest Pontif. ; Savile, Script, post Bsedam, p. 133), Sussex lay 
within yEthelberht's imperium, and passed, on the wreck of it, under 
the supremacy of the West Saxons. In Wulfhere's day it was cer- 
tainly under Mercia ; but it had probably slipped away of late from 
Mercian rule, as it had again become heathen. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ,75 

plundering; and in 688 Ceadwalla threw down his chap. vm. 
crown in disgust, and withdrew from the land to die The 
a pilgrim at Rome. 1 His work, however, found bet- Kingdoms, 
ter fortunes in the hands of his successor, Ine. After 69 ^ 29 
the close of a civil war which broke out on Cead- — 
walla's withdrawal, Ine, who, like his predecessor, qyt.j 
was of the b ranch of Geawlin, succeeded in again 
uniting the ""Gewissas under a single sway ; and so 
vigorous were his attacks upon Kent that, in 694, 
the realm paid the blood-fine for Mul and bowed to 
the West-Saxon supremacy." Its submission carried 
Ine's rule along the whole southern coast from Dor- 
set to Thanet ; and we may believe that not only the 
whole land south of the Thames, but also Essex, 
passed under the West-Saxon supremacy, as we find 
London from this time no longer in Mercian hands, 
but owning Ine as its lord. 3 

How these possessions were torn from yEthelred's Conquests 

from 

grasp we cannot tell ; for under ^Ethelred Mercian Dyvnaim. 
history is all but a blank, and there is nothing to show 
whether Ine owed his successes to the sword or to 
some civil strife which distracted the Mercian realm. 4 



1 E. Chron. a. 686, 687, 688. Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 46. 
Bseda, Hist. Eccl. v. 7. 

2 E. Chron. a. 694. Will. Malm. Gest. Reg. i. 48. 

3 Ine speaks of Earconwald, the Bishop of London and the East 
Saxons from 675 to 693, as " my bishop," in the opening of his Laws 
(Thorpe, Laws and Institutes, vol. i. p. 103). London would thus 
seem to have submitted before the close of the contest with Kent. 
In a letter dated 705, we have notice of quarrels between Ine and 
the East -Saxon rulers who had entertained exiles from Wessex. 
Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 274. 

* In 697, ^Ethelred's wife, Osthryth, was put to death by the " pri- 
mates " of Southumbria (E. Chron. a. 697 ; Bseda, Hist. Eccl. v. 24). 
After this he seems to have made over Southumbria to Wulfhere's 



,76 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. viii. I n 704, after a reign of nearly thirty years, ^thelred 
The withdrew to a monastery ; and his nephew Coenred, 
Kingdoms, the son of Wulfhere, succeeded him on the Mercian 
690^829 throne. 1 The conflict with Wessex was still, how- 
— ever, deferred ; for Ine, content with his gains south 
of the Thames, turned to a new field of conquest on 
his border in the west. Here he took up the work of 
Cenwealh and Centwine by marching, in 710, on the 
British king Geraint. 2 Shrunken as it was from its 
old area, the realm of Dyvnaint still stretched from 
the Quantocks to the Land's End, and its king 
seems to have exercised some supremacy across the 
Bristol Channel over the princes of the opposite 
coast. 3 The extent of Geraint's dominions made 
him the first among the British princes of his day. 
Even the English regarded him as a powerful ruler, 
and Ealdhelm addressed him as "the glorious lord 
of the western realm." 4 But he was unable to meet 
the shock of Ine's attack, and a hard-fought battle 
gave the West Saxons a fertile territory along the 
Tone, with the districts of Crewkerne and Ilminster. 
On the border of the newly won territory, where a 
spur of the Black Downs runs out towards the ridge 
of the Quantocks, the great flat of which this part 
of Somersetshire consists narrows into a mere neck 
of land ; and in the midst of this neck, on the banks 
of a little stream which wandered through it to the 

son, Coenred, to whom he gave up the throne in 704, retiring to the 
Monastery of Bardney. 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. v. 19, 24. 2 E. Chron. a. 710. 

3 See Freeman's " Ine," Somersetshire Archaeol. Proceedings, vol. 
xviii. 

* " Domino gloriosissimo occidentalis regni sceptra gubernanti." 
Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 268. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



377 



marshes of the Parret, Ine set up a fortress that chap, vm. 
served as an admirable military position for the The 

Three 

defence of his newly conquered territory, or as a Kingdoms, 
starting-point for a new advance on Dyvnaint. The 69 ^29. 
fortress grew into a town, and our Taunton, or Town 
on the Tone, still, even as a linguistic borderland, 
preserves the memory of this advance of Ine. 1 




Stanford's Geographical Eitab, 



The tract of country which had passed, with the Somerset. 
successive conquests of Cenwealh, Centwine, and Ine, 



1 E. Chron. a. 722 : " Tanton that Ine formerly built." Mr. El- 
worthy, in his Introduction to the Dialect of West Somerset, says : 
"The people of the little village of Ruishton, only a mile and a half 
to the east of Taunton, speak the eastern dialect ; while at Bishop's 
Hull, one mile to the west, they speak the western." 



378 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap, vin. i n to the hands of the West Saxons is that which took 
The the name of the land of the Somersastas, or our 
Kingdoms. Somerset. Few districts better illustrate the physi- 
69<m$29. ca l an d social revolution which was wrought by the 
English conquerors. Under the Romans, it had 
shared in the wealth and prosperity which character- 
ized the country north of the Avon. One of its 
towns, Bath, stood on an equal footing with Glevum 
and Corinium in the strife with the invaders ; and 
the district around its second town, Ilchester, was 
thickly studded with the villas of rich provincials, 
whose wealth was probably derived from the lead- 
mines which had been worked even in British days 
along the crest of Mendip. In the chaos of native 
rule, this wealth and order had long passed away ; 
but the raids of the West Saxons must have com- 
pleted its ruin. The towns were left desolate, as else- 
where. Bath, indeed, which had fallen into English 
hands as early as Ceawlin's day, and was now detach- 
ed from this region as a part of Mercia, already saw 
a new life rising up round the monastery which had 
been founded among its ruins ; but the peasant long 
told amidst the wreck of Ilchester a legend of its fall. 
Bristol was not as yet, and only villages and hamlets 
broke the space between Bath and Exeter ; while the 
country-houses of the provincial landowners lay burn- 
ed or in ruin, and the mines from which their wealth 
had been drawn were abandoned or forgotten. Above 
all, the industrial works which the Romans had con- 
structed for the drainage of the marshes that stretch- 
ed into the very heart of the country fell unheeded 
into decay ; the sea burst again through the neglected 
barriers at the mouth of the Parret and the Brue ; 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 379 

and the height which is known as the Tor rose like chap, vm. 
an island out of a waste of flood-drowned fen that The 
stretched westward to the Channel. Kingdom?. 

From one of the English families who chose it as 69 ^29 
their settlement a little hamlet at the base of the Tor , , — , 

. Ine s ride. 

took its name of Glastonbury, the burh of the Glaes- 
tings. 1 The spot, however, was already famous as a 
religious shrine of the Britons. It had long been a 
place of pilgrimage, for the tradition that a second 
Patrick rested there drew to it the wandering scholars 
of Ireland ; 2 and the new relation of Englishmen and 
Welshmen was shown in the reverence which Ine 
paid to this British shrine. The monastery became 
an English one, richly endowed by the king; 3 and 
beside its " ancient church, built by no art of man," 
a rude log-building left by its Welsh owners and care- 
fully preserved by the English comers, Ine founded 
his own abbey-church of stone. 1 The same mingling 
of the two races is seen in another conquest of this 
time. Side by side with their progress across Somer- 
setshire, the West Saxons must have been pushing 
their way through the woodlands of Dorset ; and even 
before Ine's conquests reached the Tone, an advance 
in this quarter from the south seems to have given 
them Exeter. By an arrangement which marks the 
new temper of the conquerors, Exeter became a double 
city. 5 Its southern half was henceforth English ; its 

1 Kemble, Saxons in England, i. 465. 

2 "Anon. Life of Dunstan," Stubbs's Memorials of Dunstan, p. 10. 

3 For his grants, see Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 306. 

4 For the successive churches of Glastonbury, see Freeman, " Ine," 
pt. ii., Somersetshire Archaeol. Proceedings, vol. xx. 

5 Kerslake, paper on " Exeter," Archaeol. Journal, vol. xxx. p. 214 
et seq. Will. Malm., Gest. Reg. vol. i. p. 214, says of yEthelstan, 



3 8o 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



690-829. 



chap. viii. northern — as is still marked by the Celtic names of 
The the saints to whom its churches in this quarter are 

Kingdoms, dedicated — remained in the hands of the Britons. 
The laws of Ine 1 which still remain to us show him 
as providing for the administrative needs of the mixed 
population which dwelt in the district that had been 
added to the West-Saxon realm ; and it was perhaps 
the same mixed character of its inhabitants which in- 
duced him to carry out Theodore's scheme of division 
in his own kingdom, 2 and, while leaving Daniel at 
Winchester as bishop of the older Wessex — that is 
to say, our Hampshire, Berkshire, Surrey, and the 
bulk of Wiltshire — to group the whole country west 
of Selwood and the Frome valley as a new bishopric 
for his kinsman Ealdhelm. 3 
ine and From this organization of his British conquests, 
however, Ine was called away by an attack on his 
northern frontier. Mercia had never forgiven the 
loss of her dominion across the Thames, and the new 
strength which Wessex drew from her conquests in 
Somerset would only spur the Midland Kingdom to 
a decisive struggle for the supremacy of the south. 



" Illos (Cornewallenses) quoque impigre adorsus, ab Excestra. quam 
ad id temporis aequo cum Anglis jure inhabitarant, cedere compulit." 

1 Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes, vol. i. pp. 119, 123, 139. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. v. 18. 

3 It was in this way that the diocese of Ealdhelm came to include 
that portion of the present Wiltshire about Malmesbury and Brad- 
ford which represents the forest tract which Cenwealh had won, as 
well as Dorset and Somersetshire. Although the West-Saxon shires 
are of older formation than those of Middle England, and, no doubt, 
mainly represent the tribal settlements of distinct West-Saxon peo- 
ples, yet I think this diocesan division shows that the formation of 
Wiltshire with its actual boundaries is later in date than this divi- 
sion of the dioceses at the beginning of the eighth century. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



38l 



In 715, Ceolred, the son of /Ethelred, who six years chap. vm. 
before had succeeded Coenred on the Mercian throne, The 
again took up the strife. He must have marched Kingdoms, 
into the very heart of Wessex, 1 for Ine met the foe 69{ ^ 2 9 
at Wanborough, on the chalk heights above the vale — 
of White Horse, where his ancestor Ceawlin had suf- 
fered his crowning defeat a century before. The bat- 
tle was a long and bloody one ; but the absence of 
all account of its issue shows that Ceolred's attack 
failed, and that the hope of subjecting the West Sax- 
ons to a Mercian sway was for the while at an end. 
The victory of Ine, indeed, seemed to raise Wessex 
again to a front rank among the powers of Britain. 
But in the hour of his glory the king had again to 
face the civil strife which was the curse of Wessex ; 
for, after thirty-three years of a glorious reign, the old 
anarchy broke out in revolts of y^Ethelings sprung, 
like himself, from the blood of Cerdic, but sprung from 
the rival line of Ceol. Ine, indeed, held his own. One 
rebel, Cynewulf, was slain ; another, Ealdberht, was 
driven to take refuge among the South Saxons. 2 But 
the strife went on ; and a wild legend tells the story 
of the disgust which at last drove Ine from the throne. 
He had feasted royally at one of his country-houses, 
and as he rode from it on the morrow his queen bade 
him turn back thither. The king returned to find 
his house stripped of curtains and vessels, and foul 
with refuse and the dung of cattle, while in the royal 
bed where he had slept with yEthelburh rested a sow 
with her farrow of pigs. The scene had no need of 
the queen's comment — " See, my lord, how the fash- 

1 E. Chron. a. 715. 2 E. Chron. a. 721, 725. 



382 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. viii. Jon of this world passeth away!" 1 In 726, Ine laid 

The down his troubled crown, and, like his predecessor 

Kingdoms. Ceadwalla, sought peace and death in a pilgrimage 

69(M$29. t0 Rome. 2 
~ , , The withdrawal of Ine and the anarchy of Wessex 

ALthelbald m , , J 

ofMerda. roused anew the hopes of its rival in Mid-Britain. In 
718, a year after his defeat by Ine at Wanborough, 
the Mercian ruler Ceolred fell frenzy-smitten at his 
board, 3 and his realm passed into the hands of the 
most vigorous of its kings. Among those who sought 
Guthlac's retirement at Crowland was ^thelbald, a 
son of Penda's brother Alweo, flying from Ceolred's 
hate. Driven off again and again by the king's pur- 
suit, vEthelbald still returned to the little hut he had 
built beside the hermitage, and comforted himself in 
hours of despair with his companion's words. " Know 
how to wait," said Guthlac, " and the kingdom will 
come to thee ; not by violence or rapine, but by the 
hand of God." On Ceolred's death, indeed, his people 
chose y^Ethelbald, who was already famous for his 
great strength and bravery, for their king. 4 ^Ethel- 
bald took up again, with better fortunes, the enter- 
prise in which his predecessor had been foiled — his 
struggle for the supremacy of the south. During the 
first ten years of his reign, indeed, he shrank from a 
conflict with the victor of Wanborough ; but in the 
anarchy that broke out on Ine's withdrawal 5 Wessex 
lay helpless before him ; and in the struggle that fol- 

1 Malmesbury, Gest. Reg. (Hardy), vol. i. p. 49. 
- Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 7. 

3 E. Chron. a. 716. Letter of Boniface to iEthelbald. Stubbs and 
Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 355. 

4 Malmesbury, Gest. Reg. (Hardy), vol. i. p. 111 ; E. Chron. a. 716. 

5 E. Chron. a. 728. 




Stanford 'a (Jcoaraph 1 . £'stabf~ 



3§4 



THE MAKING- OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vin. lowed yEthelbald overran the whole of the West- 
The Saxon country, till his siege and capture of the royal 
Kingdoms, town of Somerton in 733 seemed to end the war. 1 
690^829 F° r twenty years the overlordship of Mercia was rec- 
— ognized by all Britain south of the Humber. It was 
at the head of the forces, not of Mercia only, but of 
East Anglia and Kent, as well as of the West Sax- 
ons, 2 that ^Ethelbald marched against the Welsh on 
his western frontier ; and he styled himself " King not 
of the Mercians only, but of all the neighboring peo- 
ples who are called by the common name of South- 
ern English." 3 He had, indeed, to meet constant out- 
breaks of revolt among his new subjects. But for 
twelve years he seems to have met them with success ; 
and it was not till 754 that a general rising forced 
him to call his whole strength to the field. At the 
head of his own Mercians and of the subject hosts 
of Kent, Essex, and East Anglia, ^thelbald marched 
to the field of Burford, where the West Saxons were 
again marshalled under the golden dragon of their 
race. But the numbers of his host could not avert 
his doom. After hours of desperate fighting in the 
forefront of the battle, a sudden panic seized the Mer- 
cian king, and the supremacy of Mid-Britain passed 
forever away, as he fled first of his army from the 
field. 4 

While the two powers of Southern Britain were 

1 E. Chron. a. 733. 

2 Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (Arnold), pp. 119, 121. 

3 Charter in Palgrave, English Commonwealth, vol. ii. p. 218. 

4 E. Chron. a. 752. (From the death of Bseda, in 735, to the reign 
of ^Ethelwulf the entries of the English Chronicle are wrong by two 
years. See Stubbs's edition of Hoveden, preface to vol. i. p. lxxxix. 
et seq.) Huntingdon, Hist. Angl. (Arnold), p. 121. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



385 



wasting their energies in this desperate struggle, chap. vm. 
Northumbria remained apart in a peace which was The 
only broken by occasional troubles on her northern Kingdoms, 
border and by the beginnings of that anarchy which 69 ^2 9 
at a later time was to wreck her Greatness. The fall „ ~ 

IVOVttl 2i?7l - 

of Ecgfrith in 685 had shaken, indeed, the fabric of briaat 
the realm ; for the triumphant Picts pressed in upon 
it from the north, and drove Bishop Trumwine from 
Abercorn, 1 while their success woke the Britons to 
fresh revolt. Aldfrith, however, a brother of Ecgfrith, 
who was called from a refuge at Hii to the North- 
umbrian throne, 2 showed himself in this hour of need 
worthy of the blood from which he sprang by reas- 
serting his mastery over the men of Cumbria and 
Galloway, and exchanging the claim of lordship over 
the Picts for a profitable alliance with them. Even 
in the north, however, his work was limited within 
the bounds of self-defence ; and a consciousness of 
weakness is seen in the change which passes over 
the policy of his realm. All effort at conquest was 
for a while abandoned ; and the state which had won 
England by its sword from heathendom, and given 
her by its victories the first notion of a national unity, 
turned to bestow on her the more peaceful gifts of 
art, letters, and a new poetry. The twenty years of 
Aldfrith's rule were years of peace and order, in 
which the literary and artistic impulse which had 
been given to Northumbria alike by the Celtic and 
Roman churches produced striking results. Letters, 
above all, sprang vigorously to the front. The books 
which Benedict brought from Rome in visit after 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 26. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 26 ; Life of Cuthbert, cap. 24. 

25 



,86 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. viii. visit 1 quickened the intellectual temper of the coun- 
The try ; and it is not too much to say that under Aldfrith, 
Kingdoms, himself a man of learning and study, 2 Northumbria 
690^829. became the literary centre of Western Europe. The 
— first form the new learning took was naturally a bio- 
graphical one ; at the close of Aldfrith 's reign, indeed, 
a school of biography was already in full vigor, rem- 
nants of whose work remain to us in the anonymous 
Life of Cuthbert, and in the Life of Wilfrid by 
Eddi. 3 But this biographical outpouring soon lost 
itself in a larger literary current, and' through the 
troubled reigns of Aldfrith's three successors — Os- 
red, Coenred, and Osric 4 — as well as the more peace- 
ful reign of their successor, the scholarly Ceolwulf, 
the learning of the age seemed to be summed up in 
a Northumbrian scholar. 
Bada. Baeda — the Venerable Bede, as later times styled 
him — was born in 673, nine years after the Synod 
of Whitby, on ground which passed a year later to 
Benedict Biscop as the site of the great abbey which 
he reared by the mouth of the Wear. 5 His youth 
was trained and his long tranquil life was wholly 
spent at Jarrow, in an offshoot of Benedict's house 
which had been founded by his friend Ceolfrid. 
Baeda tells us, in his own charming way, a story of his 



1 Baeda, Vit. Abbat. (ed. Hussey), pp. 320, 323. 

2 See his purchase of a Cosmography from Abbot Ceolfrid. Baeda, 
Vit. Abbat. (ed. Hussey), p. 327. 

3 The Life of Cuthbert was the earlier of the two works ; that 
of Wilfrid may be dated about 709. 

* Osred, who was a mere boy, reigned eleven years, from 705 to 
716; Coenred two years, from 716 to 718 ; Osric eleven years, from 
718 to 729 ; Ceolwulf eight years, from 729 to 737. 

5 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 24; Vit. Abbat. (Hussey 's Baeda), p. 318. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



387 



boyhood there: how one of the great plagues which chap. vm. 
followed the Synod of Whitby swept off every monk The 
who knew how to sing in choir, save the abbot and Ki nJdoms. 
this little scholar of his ; and how the two stoutly 69 j^ 29 
kept up the service, and, dropping only the antiphons, — 
struggled through the psalms, amidst much weeping 
and sobbing, till the rest of the brethren were suffi- 
ciently instructed in the church-chant to suffer the 
full service to be restored. 1 Baeda never stirred from 
Jarrow. " I spent my whole life in the same mon- 
astery," he says, " and, while attentive to the rule of 
my order and the service of the Church, my constant 
pleasure lay in learning or teaching or writing." 2 
The words sketch for us a scholar's life, the more 
touching in its simplicity that it is the life of the 
first great English scholar. The quiet grandeur of 
a life consecrated to knowledge, the tranquil pleas- 
ure that lies in learning and teaching and writing, 
dawned in fact for Englishmen in the story of Baeda. 
While still young he became teacher ; and six hun- 
dred monks, besides strangers that flocked thither 
for instruction, formed his school of Jarrow. 3 It is 
hard to imagine how, among the toils of the school- 
master and the duties of the monk, Baeda could have 
found time for the composition of the numerous 
works that made his name famous in the West. But 
materials for study had accumulated in Northumbria 
through the journeys of Wilfrid and Benedict Biscop 
and the libraries which were forming at Wearmouth 
and York. The tradition of the older Irish teachers 
still lingered to direct the young scholar into that 

1 Anon. Hist. Abbat., in Opera Minora Bsedae (Stevenson), sec. 14. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 24. 3 Baeda, Vit. Abbat. p. 328. 



3 88 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vin. path of Scriptural interpretation to which he chiefly 
The owed his fame. Greek, a rare accomplishment in the 

Kingdoms. West, came to him from the school which the Greek 

69(M329 Archbishop Theodore had founded beneath the walls 
— of Canterbury ; while his skill in the ecclesiastical 
chant was derived from a Roman cantor whom Pope 
Vitalian had sent in the train of Benedict Biscop. 
Little by little, the young scholar made himself mas- 
ter of the whole range of the science of his time : 
he became, as Burke rightly styled him, " the father 
of English learning." 1 The tradition of the older 
classic culture was revived for England in his quo- 
tations of Plato and Aristotle, of Seneca and Cice- 
ro, of Lucretius and Ovid. Virgil cast over him 
the spell that he cast over Dante ; verses from 
the JEneld break his narratives of martyrdoms, and 
the disciple ventures on the track of the great mas- 
ter in a little eclogue descriptive of the approach of 
spring. 

His work. His work was done with small aid from others. 
" I am my own secretary," he writes. " I make my 
own notes. I am my own librarian." But forty- 
five works remained after his death to attest his 
prodigious industry. In his own eyes and those 
of his contemporaries, the most important among 



1 As a writer among Englishmen Baeda had been preceded by Aid- 
helm, who died in 709, as well as by the anonymous biographer of 
Cuthbert (between 697 and 705). Eddi, in his biography of Wilfrid 
(finished about 709), is his contemporary ; for Bseda's earliest works 
seem to date from the beginning of the eighth century (see article 
" Bseda," by Stubbs, Diet. Christ. Biog. i. 300). The De Sex ^Eta- 
tibus was written in 707. His other Scriptural, chronological, and 
biographical works preceded the Ecclesiastical History, which was 
ended in 731. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



389 



these were the commentaries and homilies upon CHAp - vm - 
various books of the Bible which he had drawn The 
from the writings of the Fathers. But he was far K i ng Joms. 
from confining himself to theology. In treatises 69< ^ 2 9 
compiled as text-books for his scholars Baeda threw — 
together all that the world had then accumulated in 
astronomy and meteorology, in physics and music, 
in philosophy, grammar, rhetoric, arithmetic, medi- 
cine. But the encyclopaedic character of his re- 
searches left him in heart a simple Englishman. He 
loved his own English tongue ; he was skilled in 
English song; his last work was a translation into 
English of the Gospel of St. John, and almost the 
last words that broke from his lips were some Eng- 
lish rimes upon death. But the noblest proof of 
his love of English lies in the work which immortal- 
izes his name. In his Ecclesiastical History of the 
English Nation, which he began just before the 
death of Aldfrith, in 704, Baeda became the first 
English historian. His work stretches over nearly 
a century and a half, from the landing of Augustine 
in 597 to the year 731, in which the old man laid 
down his pen. A prefatory opening, compiled from 
older writers, from legends and martyrologies, sums 
up the story of Britain under the Romans and its 
conquest by the English ; but it is with the landing 
of the Roman missionaries that the work really be- 
gins. There is little need for Baeda's modest ex- 
cuse. " If in what I have written any one find mat- 
ters other than what is true, let him not blame me 
for cleaving to what is the true rule of historic nar- 
rative and simply gathering from common fame the 
facts I have resolved to record for the instruction of 



690-829. 



3 n THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vni. after-times." 1 What is really marvellous is the pains 
The which he took in collecting and sifting his informa- 

Kingdoms. tion. Where he found friends as zealous as Albinus 
and Nothelm at Canterbury, his story is accurate and 
full. Even the Papal archives gave up the letters 
of Archbishops Laurentius and Honorius to his in- 
defatigable research. His work was, indeed, limit- 
ed by the difficulty of procuring information in the 
ruder states. The history of Northumbria, which 
lay within his own sphere of observation, is told with 
admirable fulness and force. Wessex, Mercia, and 
East Anglia fare worse, in spite of the information 
which reached Baeda from Bishop Daniel of Win- 
chester and the monks of Lastingham; but, fortu- 
nately, they formed during most of this period the 
least important part of the historic field. The con- 
version of Kent, the warfare of Penda, the fight of 
Northumbria for the Cross, the preaching of Aidan, 
the wanderings of Cuthbert and Chad — these were 
the main events which Bseda had to follow, and on 
all these he is graphic and full. 

His death. What Basda owed to no informant was his own ex- 
quisite faculty of story-telling. His story of Gregory 
in the market-place remains as familiar as a house- 
hold word to English children. The quaint anecdotes 
of Cuthbert, the tender details of the love that knit 
Bishop Aidan to King Oswiu, are as charmingly 
told as the story of the Sparrow which marks the 
conversion of Northumbria. But no story even of 
Baeda's telling is so touching as the story of his death. 2 

1 Preface to his Ecclesiastical History. 

2 Given by a certain Cuthbert in a letter to Cuthwine ; Sim. Durh., 
Hist. Dun. Eccl. (Twysden), i. 15. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 39 1 

Two weeks before the Easter of 735, the old man chap, vm, 
was seized with an extreme weakness and loss The 
of breath. He still preserved, however, his usual Kingdoms, 
pleasantness and good-humor, and, in spite of pro- 690 ^2 9 
longed sleeplessness, continued his lectures to the — 
pupils about him. Verses of his own English tongue 
broke from time to time from the master's lip — rude 
rimes that told how before the " need-fare," Death's 
stern " must go," none can enough bethink him 
what is to be his doom for good or ill. The tears 
of Baeda's scholars mingled with his song. " We 
never read without weeping," writes one of them. 
So the days rolled on to Ascension -tide, and still 
master and pupils toiled at their work, for Baeda 
longed to bring to an end his version of St. John's 
Gospel into the English tongue and his extracts 
from Bishop Isidore. " I don't want my boys to 
read a lie," he answered those who would have had 
him rest, " or to work to no purpose after I am 
gone." A few days before Ascension-tide his sick- 
ness grew upon him, but he spent the whole day 
in teaching, only saying cheerfully to his scholars, 
" Learn with what speed you may ; I know not how 
long I may last." The dawn broke on another sleep- 
less night, and again the old man called his scholars 
round him and bade them write. " There is still a 
chapter wanting," said the scribe, as the morning 
drew on, " and it is hard for thee to question thyself 
any longer." " It is easily done," said Baeda ; " take 
thy pen and write quickly." Amid tears and fare- 
wells the day wore on to eventide. " There is yet 
one sentence unwritten, dear master," said the boy. 
" Write it quickly," bade the dying man. " It is 



.q 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. viii. finished now," said the little scribe at last. " You 
The speak truth," said the master ; " all is finished now." 

Kingdoms. Placed upon the pavement, his head supported in 

690^829 ^ s scn °l ars ' arms, his face turned to the spot where 
— he was wont to pray, Basda chanted the solemn 
" Glory to God." As his voice reached the close of 
his song, he passed quietly away. 

The sons First among- English scholars, first anions: Eno-- 
lish theologians, first among English historians, it is 
in the monk of Jarrow that English learning strikes 
its roots. But the quiet tenor of his life was broken 
by the signs of coming disorganization in Northuni- 
bria; and though this anarchy was quelled by the 
scholarly Ceolwulf, to whom Basda dedicated his His- 
tory, after eight years of rule this king laid down 
his sword in disgust, 1 and withdrew to a monastery. 
His reign, however, had been marked by an ecclesi- 
astical change which shows how strongly the pro- 
vincial feeling of severance in the three kingdoms 
was struggling against the centralizing action of the 
Church. At the close of his life the state of things 
which he saw about him drew from Baeda a scheme 
of religious reformation, one of whose chief features 
was the revival of the archbishopric which Pope 
Gregory had originally designed to set up in the 
north ; 2 and this suggestion was soon realized by the 
occupant of the see of York, Ecgberht, who procured 
from Rome his recognition as archbishop in 735.' 
From this time, therefore, so far as Northumbria was 
concerned, the work of Theodore was to a great ex- 

1 Sim. Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. (Twysden), ii. i. 

2 Epist. ad Ecgbertum, in Hussey's Bseda, p. 332. 

3 Appendix Baedse, a. 735, in Hussey's Baeda, p. 314. 



690-829. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 293 

tent undone; the supremacy of the see of Canter- chap. vm. 
bury found a rival across the Humber ; and the The 
political isolation of the northern kingdom was re-^ngdoms. 
fleeted in its religious independence. The close 
connection of the new see and the northern throne 
was seen three years later, in J2>8> when the arch- 
bishop's brother, Eadberht, became king of the North- 
umbrians. The joint character of their rule was 
shown in the " stycas," or copper pieces which were 
coined in the mint at York, and which bear the lee- 
end of the king on one side and of the primate on 
the other. 1 

Never had the kingdom shown greater vigor with- Eadberht 
in or without than under these two sons of Eata. Ecgberht. 
Eadberht showed himself from the outset of his reien 
an active and successful warrior. Though attacked 
at the same time on his southern border by ./Ethel- 
bald of Mercia, he carried on in 740 a successful war 
against the Picts ; 2 and ten years later recovered 
from the Britons of Strathclyde the district of Kyle 
in Ayrshire. 3 So great was his renown that the 
Frank king Pippin sent envoys to Northumbria 
with costly gifts and offers of his friendship. 4 Mean- 
while Archbishop Ecgberht had shown as restless 
an activity in the establishment of a school at York. 
We have already seen the return of life to this city 
in the reign of Eadwine, and, though it seems to have 
been again forsaken by the kings of Bernician race 
who followed him, it became from Wilfrid's days the 

1 Article by Raine on " Ecgberht," Diet. Christ. Biog. ii. 50. 

2 Appendix Bsedse, a. 740, Hussey's Baeda, p. 314. 

3 Ibid. a. 750. 

4 Sim. Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. ii. 3 (Twysden, p. 11). 



3 9 4 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. viii. religious centre of the north; while under Eadberht, 
The if not before, it had become its political centre. 1 The 

Kingdoms, whole of its northern quarter and much of its eastern 
690^829. na d been given up to the bishop and his clergy by 
— Eadwine, doubtless because in its then state of aban- 
donment it was a part of the folk-land, and remained 
open to give ; and in the heart of it the king had 
reared a little wooden chapel for Paulinus and be- 
gun a larger church of stone. 2 But his fall stopped 
the progress of this building; and Wilfrid in 670 
found the church almost in ruins, its windows cover- 
ed with mere trellis-work, and its roof rotted with 
the rain. 3 The bishop's energy, however, soon made 
this church a rival even of his buildings in Ripon 
and Hexham, and its enlargement and decoration 
were actively carried on by Ecgberht, by whose days 
York had become the settled capital of the kingdom. 

1 How completely even the main lines of communication which 
ran through the older town were blotted out by the time of the 
English settlement, we may see from comparing a ground-plan of 
the early English streets with those of their Roman predecessors. 
(For early York, see a map in Mr. Freeman's Norman Conquest, 
vol. iv. p. 202.) We see from this that the road from Aldborough 
to the south, if it still crossed the English city in the line of the 
Roman Way, diverged widely from this line to cross the Fosse ; 
while the road to Malton, which crossed the former at right angles 
in the heart of Eboracum, ceased to exist in the English York, save 
in a fragment called Stone Gate. Indeed, the minster with its build- 
ings lay right across what had been the line of it. The bridge by 
which it crossed the Ouse, and the gate by which it left the town, 
equally disappeared. The name of Stone Gate or Street, which 
marks a part of this line where the modern highway coincided with 
the line of the old Roman road, would of itself suggest that else- 
where the new lines of occupation lay, not along the paved cause- 
ways of old Eboracum, but along unpaved lanes which wandered 
over its site. 

2 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. ii. 14. 3 Eddi, cap. 16. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 095 

Ecgberht not only established a school in connection chap. vm. 
with his church, but supplied its educational needs The 
by gathering the largest library which had yet been Kingdoms, 
seen in Britain — a library in which Pliny and some 68 ^£ 9 
at least of the works of Aristotle, the orations of 
Cicero, and the poems of Virgil, Statius, and Lucan, 
might be seen side by side with grammarians and 
scholiasts, and in which the works of two English- 
men at least, Ealdhelm and Baeda, mingled them- 
selves with the long roll of Greek and Latin Fathers. 1 

1 The list which Alcuin gives us in his poem De Pontificibus 
(Raine's Historians of Church of York, p. 395) is of singular inter- 
est, as the first catalogue which we have of any English library : 
" Illic invenies veterum vestigia patrum, 

Quidquid habet pro se Latio Roman us in orbe, 

Grsecia vel quidquid transmisit clara Latinis, 

Hebraicus vel quod populus bibit imbre superno, 

Africa sucifluo vei quidquid lumine sparsit. 

Quod pater Hieronymus, quod sensit Hilarius, atque 

Ambrosius prsesul, simul Augustinus, et ipse 

Sanctus Athanasius, quod Orosius edit avitus : 

Quidquid Gregorius summus docet, et Leo papa ; 

Basilius quidquid, Fulgentius atque, coruscant, 

Cassiodorus item, Chrysostomus atque Johannes. 

Quidquid et Athelmus docuit, quid Beda magister, 

Quae Victorinus scripsere Boetius atque 

Historici veteres, Pompeius, Plinius, ipse 

Acer Aristoteles, rhetor quoque Tullius ingens, 

Quid quoque Sedulius, vel quid canit ipse Juvencus, 

Alcimus et Clemens, Prosper, Paulinus, orator, 

Quid Fortunatus, vel quid Lactantius edunt. 

Quae Maro Virgilius, Statius, Lucanus et auctor ; 

Artis grammaticse vel quid scripsere magistri, 

Quid Probus atque Focas, Donatus, Priscianusve, 

Servius, Euticius, Pompeius, Comminianus. 

Invenies alias perplures, lector, ibidem. 

Egregios studiis, arte et sermone magistros, 

Plurima qui claro scripsere volumina sensu ; 

Nomina sed quorum praesenti in carmine scribi 

Longius est visum, quam plectri postulet usus." 



396 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND." 



680-829. 



umbria. 



chap. viii. Ecgberht was himself the leading teacher in his 
The school, instructing its clerks or discussing literary 

KinSL questions with them ; and the efficiency of his teach- 
ing is shown by such a scholar as Alcuin. Scholars, 
indeed, flocked to him from every country ; for it was 

of North- at a moment when learning seemed to be flickering 
out both in Ireland and among the Franks that the 
school of York gathered to itself the intellectual 
impulse which had been given to Northumbria by 
Bseda, and preserved that tradition of learning and 
culture which was to spread again, through Alcuin, 
over the nations of the West. The school, indeed, 
long survived its founder, for the glory of the sons 
of Eata proved but brief. In 756, Eadberht continued 
his attacks on Strathclyde ; and, allying himself with 
the Picts, made himself master even of its capital, 
Alcluyd, or Dumbarton. But at the moment when 
his triumph seemed complete, his army was utterly 
destroyed 1 as it withdrew homewards, only a few 
days after the city's surrender ; and so crushing was 
this calamity that, two years after it, not only did 
Eadberht withdraw to a monastery and leave the 
throne to his son Osulf, 2 but the archbishop joined 
his brother in retirement, till both were laid side by 
side in the minster at York. 3 With the death of the 
two sons of Eata, the peace of the kingdom disap- 
peared. Men of unknown lineage disputed the throne 
with kings of the royal stock ; revolts of the nobles 
added to the general disorder ; and the fierce blood- 
shedding which characterized the successive strifes 

1 Sim. Dunelm. Gest. Reg. a. 756 (Twysden, p. 106). 

2 Sim. Dunelm. Hist. Dun. Eccl. ii. 3. 

3 Sim. Dunelm. Hist. Dun. Eccl. ii. 3 (Twysden, p. 16). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. ^J 

for the crown showed the moral deterioration of the chap, vm. 
country. Isolated as Northumbria had become, its The 
isolation became even more pronounced in these Kingdoms, 
fifty years of anarchy; for even the intermarriages 69 ^T 2 9 
of its kings with the other kingly houses all but — 
ceased, and the northern realm hardly seemed to 
form part of the English people. 

In spite, however, of this anarchy, Northumbria re- England 
mained to the last the chief seat of English religion continent. 
and English learning. In the midst of its political 
disorder, learning and the love of books still flour- 
ished at Jarrow and York, and at the close of the 
century a Northumbrian scholar was the centre of 
the literary revival at the court of the Franks. It is 
the correspondence of this scholar, Alcuin, which 
first reveals to us a change that was at this moment 
passing over our history. Till now the fortunes of 
the English people had lain wholly within the bounds 
of the Britain they had won. With what was left of 
the Roman Empire the new country held no rela- 
tions whatever. With the kindred German peoples 
across the Channel its intercourse was scant and un- 
important. But in the eighth century our national 
horizon suddenly widened, and the fortunes of Eng- 
land became linked to the general fortunes of West- 
ern Christendom. The change was brought about 
by the work of English missionaries in the mother- 
country of Englishmen. While yElla and Cerdic 
were overrunning Britain, the mass of the tribes be- 
tween Friesland and the Elbe remained in their old 
homeland, unchanged in religion or in institutions. 
Little or no intercourse seems to have gone on be- 
tween these Saxons and their offshoot on British 



398 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vin. soil. But the tie of kinship had never been forgot- 

The ten ; and from the moment when a storm drove Bishop 

Kingdoms. Wilfrid in 677 x to the Frisian coast, a new interest 

690^829 * n * ne race fr° m which their blood was drawn sprang 

— up among Englishmen. Even in the dark hour of 

JNectansmere a Northumbrian scholar was calling 

for mission priests to labor " among the nations in 

Germany to whom the English or Saxons who now 

inhabit Britain are known to owe their blood and 

origin;" 2 but nothing had been actually done for 

their conversion when a way for mission labor was 

opened by the sword of the Franks. 

The The Franks had long stood first in power among 

Franks. & r & 

the German peoples who settled amidst the wreck 
of Rome. While Jute and Engle and Saxon were 
creeping slowly along the southern shores of Britain, 
their Frankish neighbors on the Lower Rhine had 
swept over Northern Gaul, over the southern king- 
dom of the Visigoths, and over the Burgundian realm 
in the valley of the Rhone. Nor were the Frank con- 
quests limited to what had been Roman ground. 
Eastward across the Rhine other German tribes — 
Alemannians, Thuringians, and Bavarians — became 
their tributaries; and at the time when Augustine 
traversed Frankland on his way to Kent their lord- 
ship stretched from the Pyrenees to the Scheldt, and 
from the Bay of Biscay to the Inn. Even at this 
early time, therefore, no other Teutonic state could 
vie either in power or extent of rule with a realm 
which seemed already more than a match for what 
remained of the Empire of Rome. But it was long 

1 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 19. 9 Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 9. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 299 

before the influence of the Franks told as ft might CHAP - vnr 
have been expected to tell on the general politics of The 

• ..... Three 

the West. The mass of tribes and principalities Kingdoms, 
which owned their name or bowed beneath their 



690-829. 

sway was too loosely bound together to exercise any 
definite pressure on the world without them. For a 
while, indeed, their anarchy seemed to undo all that 
their early victories had done. In the midst of the 
seventh century their power over Germany had all 
but gone. Though their hold remained unshaken in 
the central districts between the Neckar and the 
Main, Bavarians and Swabians had alike thrown off 
their rule to the south, while northwards the Saxons 
pushed forward from the Weser to the Rhine, and 
the Frisians won the lands round the mouth of the 
Scheldt. But it was just at this moment of weak- 
ness that the anarchy of the realm came suddenly to 
an end, and the Frankish states drew together into a 
power which overawed the world. In 687 a victory 
at Testri placed the Eastern Franks of the Rhine 
and the Meuse at the head of their race, and the rule 
of their older royal house, the Merwings, was practi- 
cally set aside for that of the leader of these Eastern 
Franks, Pippin of Herstal. 

The victory of Pippin changed at a blow the polit- England 
ical aspect of Western Christendom. Primarily it Franks. 
was a rally of the Frank race against pressure from 
without; and the mass of warring tribes had no 
sooner drawn together than the recovery of Lower 
Friesland showed their resolve to build up again the 
supremacy over Germany which the Franks had in 
great measure lost. But Testri was destined to have 
far wider issues than the mere restoration of the 



400 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, viii. realm of Chlodowig. It was the victory of Pippin 
The which drew England into connection with the fort- 
Kingdoms, unes of the Franks. A friendly intercourse seems 
690^829. t° have gone on between the two peoples ever since 
— their settlement on either side of the Channel. There 
is little, indeed, to indicate the existence of any early 
political relations between them, but the bond of a 
common religion drew the two countries more closely 
together. Kings of East Anglia took refuge among 
the Franks from the sword of Penda. 1 Frankish 
missionaries, such as Agilberct, made their way into 
Britain. English. children were sent to be trained in 
Frank monasteries, and the daughters of Kentish 
kings became Frankish abbesses. 2 The passion for 
pilgrimages which arose at the close of the seventh 
century made English travellers familiar with the 
Frank kingdom as they passed through it on their 
way to Rome. 3 But it was not till the victory of 
Testri that the connection of England and the 
Franks became in any way a political connection. 
Victorious over the Frieslanders of the Scheldt, the 
Frankish leader was anxious to complete his victory 
by their conversion, and the zeal of Englishmen to 
win their kindred to the faith supplied him with mis- 
sionaries. If Pippin did not summon the Northum- 
brian Willibrord and his twelve fellow-preachers to 
his court in 690, he at any rate assured them, when 
they appeared there, of his support and protection in 
their mission work along the Northern Sea. 4 

1 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iii. 18. 

2 Bseda, Hist. Eccl. iv. 23 ; ibid. ii. 20. 

3 Charles to Offa. Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. pp. 496, 
497- * Baeda, Hist. Eccl. v. 10. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



401 



Willibrord fixed his bishop's seat at Utrecht, and chapjtch. 
labored for forty years among the stubborn Fries- The 
landers ; while the sword of Pippin and his son, Kingdoms. 
Charles Martel, was slowly building up again the 69 ^29. 
empire of the Franks. But the work of Willibrord T/ ^ n<r 
was eclipsed by that of the West Saxon Winfrith, or lish mis- 
Boniface, who crossed to the Continent in the closing 
years of Ine's reign, or about 718. 1 Boniface, like 

1 The work of Boniface lies too far outside English bounds to 
make a part of our story. But in European history his part is a 
great one. His English name was Winfrith ; he was born in the 
last quarter of the seventh century at Crediton, and brought up in 
a monastery in or near Exeter. He became monk at Nutsell or 
Netley by Winchester, a priest at thirty, and so famous for learning 
that he was deputed by Ine to attend a council convoked by Arch- 
bishop Berhtwald. He sailed soon after 716, with two or three 
monks, to Utrecht ; found the Frisian king Radbod at war with 
Charles Martel, and, looking on missionary work there as hopeless, 
returned home again, and with letters from Bishop Daniel visited 
Gregory II. at Rome, where the Pope gave him a commission to 
evangelize Central Europe. He returned by Lombardy, and, cross- 
ing the Alps into the Duchy of Bavaria, proceeded thence to Thur 
ringia, a country half heathen, half converted by Scot missionaries. 
Here, however, in the midst of his labors of organization and disci- 
pline, he heard of the death of Radbod (719), and he at once started 
for Friesland, where for three years he assisted Willibrord ; then re- 
turning to Thuringia in the wake of Charles Martel's victorious 
troops, he conducted a mission among Hessian heathens, between 
the Middle Rhine and the Elbe, till 723, when he again visited Rome 
and Gregory. He was now made " regionary bishop," assuming the 
name of Bonifacius, and was bound by a stringent oath of fealty to 
the Pope. Starting again with commendatory letters to Charles 
Martel, then in a fresh tide of conquests, he gained his support, and 
again attacked the Hessians and felled their sacred oak at Geismar. 
A constant correspondence with England drew to him monks, mon- 
ey, and books in plenty; and in 731 a new pope, Gregory III., made 
him archbishop and " legate," so that he was enabled to correct re- 
fractory monks and control chaos in Thuringia, as well as found 
missions and monasteries near Erfurt, Fritzlar, and Homburg in 
Hesse. In 738, with a great train of monks and converts, he visited 
Rome for the last time ; returned through Bavaria, and organized 

26 



402 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vin. his predecessor, looked for support to the Frankish 
The kings. " Without your aid," he owned to Charles 
Kingdoms. Martel, " I could neither control the people nor de- 
690^829 f en d the priests, nor prevent pagan and idolatrous 
— rites in Germany." And the Frank aid was un- 
grudgingly given ; it was the threats of Charles 
which shielded the missionary as he levelled the 
heathen temples to the ground and hewed down the 
oak of Thunder in the sacred grove by Fritzlar. 
In this strange alliance of the Gospel and the sword, 
the sword necessarily played the weightier part. 
Had the Germans, indeed, been willing to listen to 
mere preaching, the preaching of the English mis- 
sionaries was hardly such as to win them to the 
faith of Christ. A Frisian king who paused on the 
brink of baptism to ask whither his fathers had gone 
who had died unchristened was told that they had 
gone to hell. " Whither they have gone will I go !" 
said Radbod, and turned back from the font. But 
preaching in any shape was wasted on men who 
saw in the missionaries only an advance guard of 

the Church there by founding four sees in that duchy. Still backed 
by Charles Martel's sons, especially Pippin, he wielded authority 
over Austrasia and Neustria, and rose into the greatest Church fig- 
ure of the day. In 743 he became Archbishop of Mainz, with a dio- 
cese stretching from Coin to Strasburg, and from Worms to Coire ; 
and showed his activity by founding sees at Wiirzburg, Erfurt, Eich- 
stadt, and in Hesse at Buraburg, while in 744 he founded the Abbey 
of Fulda in the great forest between Hesse and Bavaria. In 751 
Pippin was made king through his means ; but Boniface, from his 
letters, seems not to have been present at the coronation. He was, 
in fact, withdrawing from active life. In 753 he named Lull his suc- 
cessor at Mainz ; and now, " infirm and decrepit in body," set out 
for Frisia, and was martyred there June 4. For his life, besides the 
passages in Bseda, we have a biography by Willibrord, and his col- 
lected letters. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 403 

the Frank invaders, and in the Gospel a badge of chap, to. 
national slavery. The old religious tolerance of the The 
German peoples disappeared. The new faith ad- Kingdoms, 
vanced and drew back with the victories or defeats 69 ^29. 
of the Franks. Here and there the German axe — 
avenged the wrongs of German freedom as of the 
German gods, and at the moment when his own 
Wessex was finally shaking off the Mercian su- 
premacy, Boniface himself fell beneath the sword of 
heathen Frieslanders. By this time, however, the 
work of the missionaries was done. From the banks 
of the Danube to the mouth of the Rhine all Ger- 
many, save the stubborn Saxon land, bowed, if but 
in name, to the faith of Christ. 

But the conversion of Germany by the English Remitsof 

i 1 t- 1 their work. 

missionaries was more than a victory for the Franks 
or for Christianity, it was a victory for Rome. Eng- 
land owed its faith to the papacy, and it was to 
Rome that its missionaries looked as the religious 
centre of Christendom. If they drew their tem- 
poral power from the Frankish sword, they sought 
spiritual authority from the hands of the Roman 
bishop. It was to Rome that Willibrord wandered 
for ordination as bishop of the Frieslanders ; it was 
from Rome that Boniface sought his commission to 
preach in Central and Southern Germany. In visit 
after visit to the shrine of the Apostles, the mission- 
aries bound the German Church firmly to the obe- 
dience of the see of St. Peter. Their action was a 
turning-point in the history of the papacy; for it 
was to the immense accession of power which their 
work gave it that the spiritual monarchy of Rome 
over the West was mainly due. But it was a turn- 



404 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. viii. ing-point also in the history of the Franks. The 
The submission to her spiritual sway of the peoples whom 

Kingdoms, their sword had won first brought Rome and the 

690^829 F ran ks together, and the union of the two powers 
— was soon drawn closer by mutual needs. Rome 
saw in the Franks the one state which could save 
her from the ambition of the Lombards and the 
pressure of the Eastern Emperor. The House of 
Pippin, on the other hand, saw in Rome the one 
source of religious authority which could give a 
sacred sanction to their rule ; and in the years that 
followed Ine's withdrawal from the throne the alli- 
ance between the Franks and the papacy took a 
formal shape. In 751 the voice of Rome pronounced 
that the honors of sovereignty over the Frankish 
peoples should fall to the actual holder of power. 
The Merwing Hilderick was formally deposed, and 
Pippin the Short, the son of Charles Martel, was 
anointed king of the Franks with the assent of Bon- 
iface as legate of the Papal See. A few years later, 
Pippin repaid his debt to Rome by crossing the 
Alps and by delivering the papacy from the pressure 
of the Lombards. 

Merciaim- j n bringing about this union between Rome and 
the Franks, the English missionaries had given their 
after-shape to the fortunes of modern Europe. The 
greatness of the papacy in the Middle Ages sprang 
from the recognition of its authority by the German 
Church which Boniface and Willibrord had built up. 
In saving Rome from the Lombards Pippin and his 
son, Charles the Great, brought about a revival of 
the Empire in the West. A common interest begot 
at a single moment the two mighty powers which 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



405 



were to part mediaeval Christendom between them, chap. vm. 
and from whose strife were to spring the faiths and The 
the nations of modern Europe. As yet, however, Kingdoms, 
these mighty issues were unseen ; and England 69 ^ 2 9 
knew only of the connection between Pippin and — 
the English preachers in the intercourse between 
Britain and the Frankish Court which this connec- 
tion brought about. Its fortunes, indeed, at this 
moment offered a strange contrast to those of the 
country across the Channel. While the Franks 
were drawing together into a vast and concentrated 
power, the work of national consolidation among 
the English seemed to be fatally arrested. The 
battle of Burford had finally settled the division of 
Britain into three equal powers. Wessex was now 
as firmly planted south of the Thames as North- 
umbria north of the Humber ; and the Midland 
kingdom could henceforth hope for no extension 
beyond either of these rivers. At the moment, in- 
deed, of its great defeat it could hardly hope to re- 
tain its supremacy even over this territory. Not 
only had Wessex been freed by the battle of Bur- 
ford, but ^thelbald's own throne seems to have 
been shaken; for in 757 the Mercian king was sur- 
prised and slain in a night attack by his ealdormen, 1 
and a year of confusion passed ere his kinsman Offa 
could avenge him on his murderers and succeed to 
the realm. But in the anarchy Mercia had shrunk 
into narrower bounds. Kent, Essex, and East Anglia 
had thrown off her yoke, while the Welshmen were 
rallying to fresh inroads over her western border. 



Appendix Baedae, a. 757. 



406 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap, viii. None of the Mercian losses had been so grievous 

The as the loss of Kent. Through Kent ran the main 

Kingdoms, road of communication with the Continent ; it was 

690^829. fr° m the ports of Kent that English merchants set 

._ — . 7 sail across the Channel; and the Kentish port-dues 

Wars with . L 

Kent and formed a welcome addition to the Mercian revenue. 

W&SS6X 

Kent, too, was the seat of an archbishopric whose 
obedience was owned by the whole English Church 
south of the Humber, and whose political weight 
was making itself more strongly felt every day. 
Yet years had to pass before Offa could set about 
the recovery of this province, and it was only after 
a struggle of three years that a victory at Otford, 1 
in 775, gave it back to the Mercian realm. With 
Kent, the king doubtless again recovered Essex and 
London, within whose walls, in a quarter which was 
doubtless then still uninhabited, he built, according 
to the tradition of the city, a royal vill, whose site 
is now marked by a church of St. Albans. The re- 
conquest of these dependencies in the southeast 
may have spurred Offa to a fresh encounter with 
the West Saxons; and four years later, in 779, he 
marched upon the fragment of their kingdom which 
remained to the north of the Thames, the district 
of the Four Towns, and of the modern shires of 
Oxford and Buckingham. The two armies met in 
a hard -fought encounter at Bensington, 2 and the 
capture of the town as well as the eventual posses- 
sion of the disputed district shows that the victory 
remained with Offa. 

The success was a great one, for, as the locality 

1 E. Chron. a. 773 (5). a E. Chron. a. 777 (9). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. * * 

of their battles shows, it was this district, above all, chap. vm. 
that had formed the subject of contention between The 
Mercia and the West Saxons; while its conquest Kingdoms, 
gave the Midland kingdom a strong southern fron- 6g ^" 2 9 
tier in the course of the Thames. But how balanced „ — 

i i r Conquests 

was the struggle is clear from the fact that it brought over the 
Offa's efforts to build up again the supremacy of 
his predecessor to an end, and that for the nine 
years that followed Mercia made no further efforts 
to extend her power over her English neighbors. 
Like her rivals, she turned upon the Welsh. 1 Push- 
ing, after 779, over the Severn, whose upper course 
had served till now as the border-line between Brit- 
on and Englishman, Offa drove the King of Powys 
from his capital, Pengwyrn, whose older name its 
conquerors replaced by the significant designation 
of the Town in the Scrub, Scrobsbyryg, or Shrews- 
bury, and carried the Mercian border to the Wye. 
The border-line he drew after his inroad is marked 
by a huge earthwork which runs from the mouth 
of the Wye to that of the Dee, and which still bears 
the name of Offa's Dyke. A settlement of Eng- 
lishmen on the land between this dyke and the Sev- 
ern served as a military frontier for the Mercian 
realm. Here, as in the later conquests of the North- 
umbrians and the West Saxons, the older plan of 
clearing the conquered from the soil was abandoned. 
The Welshmen no longer withdrew from the land 

1 Annales Cambriae (Rolls ed.), a. 778-784. The story of the dyke 
is not found before Asser (Asser, ed. Wise, p. 10) ; and the dyke it- 
self is certainly in parts a natural feature, and not artificial. But the 
later tradition is probably right in taking it as a bound of their con- 
quest. 



408 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vin. which the English won ; they dwelt undisturbed 
The among their conquerors ; and it was probably to 
Kingdoms, regulate the relations of the two races on the border 
69(M$29 ne na< ^ won t nat Orra drew up the code which bore 
— his name. 1 
Merda i n the central as in the northern realm, attacks 
Wessex. on the Britons marked the close of all dreams of 
supremacy over the English themselves. Under 
Offa, Mercia sank into virtual isolation. As we shall 
see, he cherished to the very close of his life the 
hope of restoring in its fulness the older realm of 
Central Britain by the recovery of East Anglia; but 
he abstained from any effort to extend his suprema- 
cy over the two rival kingdoms. The anarchy into 
which Northumbria sank after Eadberht's death 
never tempted him to cross the H umber; nor was 
he shaken from his inaction by as tempting an op- 
portunity which presented itself across the Thames. 
Their new strength had not drawn the West Saxons 
from their attitude of isolation ; though they were 
ready to defend their independence against Mercian 
attack, their aggressive force, like that of Offa or 
Northumbria, was turned not against their fellow- 
Englishmen, but against the Welsh. It must have 
been during the years which followed on the battle 
of Burford that they made themselves masters of 
that part of what remained of the shrunken king- 
dom of Dyvnaint which still retains its old name in 
the form of Devon, and pushed their frontier from 
the Exe and the Tone, where Ine had left it, as far 
westward as the Tamar. But in 786 their progress 

1 The code is lost, but is mentioned by Alfred in his Laws. 
Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutes, vol. i. p. 59. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 4 9 

was stayed by a fresh outbreak of anarchy. Their chap. vm. 
king Cynewulf was slain by the brother of a king The 
whom he had himself driven from the throne, 1 and Kingdoms, 
the succession of his son Beorhtric was disputed by 69 ^ 2 9. 
Ecgberht, a descendant, like Ine, of Ceawlin, and thus — 
a representative of the rival line of the House of 
Cerdic. The strife ended in Eco^berht's defeat and 
in his flight to Offa's court; but the Mercian king 
used his presence not so much to further schemes 
of aggrandizement as to bring about a peaceful con- 
nection with his turbulent neighbors, and three years 
later Beorhtric purchased Ecgberht's expulsion from 
Mercia by taking Offa's daughter, Eadburh, to wife. 8 

At this moment, indeed, Offa was bent on a proj- Anhbish- 

1 . • i 1 r • opric of 

ect which pointed to the purpose of making the Lichfield. 
threefold division of Britain a permanent basis of its 
political order. This was the erection of a third 
archbishopric. Theodore's design of gathering into 
one the whole English Church round the centre of 
Canterbury had already in part broken down ; for 
when Northumbria abandoned the hope of a nation- 
al supremacy and withdrew into provincial isolation, 
she raised the see of York into a new archbishop- 
ric. Offa now followed its example. The mission 
of two Papal legates to Britain in 786 s was the result 
of urgent letters from the king ; and in a synod held 
under their presidency in the following year, Lich- 
field was raised into an archbishopric, with the 
Bishops of Mercia and East Anglia for its suf- 
fragans. 4 After-tradition was probably right in look- 

1 E. Chron. a. 784 (6). s E. Chron, a. 787 (9). 

3 Sim. Dunelm. de Gest. Reg. a. 786. 

4 E. Chron. a. 785 (really 787). Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, etc. 



. IO THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vin. ing on this measure as intended mainly to lessen the 
The power of Canterbury, where the primates were be- 
Kingdoms. coming a centre of Kentish resistance to the Mer- 
69 ~ 29 cian overlordship. Left with only four suffragans — 
— the Bishops of Rochester and London, of Selsey and 
Winchester ' — the see of Augustine must have sunk 
into the weakest and least important of the three 
primacies between which Britain was now divided. 
But, both ecclesiastically and politically, Offa's act 
pointed to far wider issues than this. It brought 
England into new and more direct relations with 
Rome. Roman legates were called to remould the 
fabric of the English Church, and the Papal sanction 
was met by a pledge on Offa's part that he and his 
successors would pay year by year a sum both for 
alms and lights to the see of St. Peter. Its political 
results promised to be even weightier. Had this 
threefold division remained stamped on the English 
Church, it would hardly have failed to strengthen 
the threefold division which seemed to be stamping 
itself on the English nation. The effect of its sepa- 
rate primacy in strengthening the isolation of the 
north was seen at a later day in the difficulty with 
which this part of England was brought into polit- 
ical union with the rest, whether by the sword of 
Eadred or of William the Norman. Had the arch- 
bishopric of Lichfield proved a more lasting one, it 
could hardly have been less effective in strengthen- 
ing the isolation of Mid-Britain, and in throwing a 
fresh hindrance in the way of any fusion of English- 
men into a single people. 

vol. iii. p. 443 et seq. for documents of this mission and valuable 
notes. 1 Malmesbury, Gest. Reg. (Hardy), i. 119. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 4 H 

All Off a, in fact, aimed at was the union of Mid- chap. vm. 
Britain, of the land between the Humber and the The 
Thames, with its Kentish outlet, under the Mercian Kingdoms, 
crown ; and even in this aim he was still foiled by the 69( ^ 2 9 
resistance of East Anglia. Not only was he ham- ' — , 

. ° . J Charles the 

pered in any larger projects of aggrandizement by Great. 
the dread of the West Saxons, but he was forced to 
watch jealously a power which had risen to a dan- 
gerous greatness over-sea. The results of the ac- 
tion of Boniface and his fellow - missionaries had 
been rapidly developing themselves through the 
reign of Offa, and the power of the Franks had now 
risen to a height which made them supreme in the 
Western world. After a short interval of divided 
sovereignty on the death of Pippin, his son Charles, 
so well-known in after -days as Charles the Great, 
won full possession of the Frankish throne. The 
policy of Charles towards the English kingdoms re- 
mained as friendly as that of his father. The polit- 
ical incidents of the new reign, indeed, made English 
friendship more needful than ever to the Franks, 
for the two peoples whose hostility threatened them 
with immediate war were both linked, in different 
ways, to Englishmen. In their German home the 
Lombards had been close neighbors of the con- 
querors of Britain, and the similarity of their dress, 
the identity of many of the Lombard and English 
names, as well as chance marriages of Lombard 
kings with Englishwomen, point to closer bonds be- 
tween the peoples than those of mere neighborhood. 
Nor had Englishmen forgotten that the Saxons of 
the Continent, with whom Charles was now about 
to open the most terrible contest of his reign, were 



4I2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vin. the stock from which they sprang, though their zeal 
The for the Christianization of their kindred was strong 
Kingdoms, enough to overpower the more natural sympathy 
69<mj29 w ^ n them in their struggle for freedom against the 
— sword of the Frank. But this common religious in- 
terest on the Saxon Shore was not the only bond 
which drew Frank and Englishman together. A 
common political interest revealed itself in their re- 
lations with the Celtic peoples on either side the 
Channel. Among the most harassing troubles of 
the Franks was the restless craving of the Bret- 
ons for freedom; and the struggle of the Bretons 
against the Franks found echoes in the struggle 
of their Welsh brethren in Britain against the 
English kingdoms. Offa was bridling the inroads 
of the Central Welshmen, Wessex was slowly press- 
ing westward on those of Dyvnaint, at the mo- 
ment when the bravest of the Frank warriors found 
endless work in stamping out again and again the 
unquenchable fire of revolt among the Celts of 
Brittany. 
Charles The scanty details which we possess of inter- 
course between Charles and the English kingdoms 
point to a policy which would naturally be dictated 
by these common interests. His friendship with 
the Northumbrian scholar Alcuin, who joined him 
in 782, naturally drew Charles into close relations 
with Northern Britain ; but his missions and re- 
monstrances in this quarter seem at first to have 
aimed simply at checking the anarchy of Northum- 
bria. With Offa — if we judge from the fragments 
of their correspondence which remain, rather than 
from later traditions — the relations of Charles were 



and Offa. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 4I g 

equally friendly. 1 He may have striven to save chap. vm. 
Kent from his grasp, and threatening letters from The 
the Frankish Court may have met the Mercian on King^s. 
his march into the province. 2 But if so, Offa's dis- 69( ^29. 
regard of them was followed by no act of more di- — 
rect intervention. At the moment, indeed, of the re- 
conquest of Kent, the hands of Charles were tied by 
dangers nearer home. It was no time to provide a 
quarrel in his rear when he was marching to his final 
struggle with the Lombards, and threatened with 
the opening of a struggle far sterner and more last- 
ing with the Saxons of the Elbe. In the years which 
followed, indeed, the power of the Frankish king 
reached a height which made any hostility from 
England of less moment to him. While Offa was 
mastering Kent, Charles put an end to the mon- 
archy of the Lombards, and added the bulk of Italy 
to the Frankish realm. While the Mercian king 
drove the Welsh from the Severn, Charles was driv- 
ing the Saxons in thousands to baptism in the 
Lippe, and carrying his border over the Pyrenees to 
the Elbe. At the moment when Ecgberht made his 
way to the Frankish Court, its king had become 
master of a realm which stretched from Brittany to 
the mountains of Bohemia, and from Zaragoza to 
the mouth of the Elbe. But, immense as was his 
power, Charles was still careful to keep up good re- 



1 In a letter written in 796, or at the close of Offa's life, Charles 
speaks of their "antiqui inter nos pacti," as well as of the constant 
correspondence between them, "epistolis, quse diversis siquidem 
temporibus per missorum vestrorum manus delatse sunt " (Stubbs 
and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 496). 

2 This is only mentioned by the supposititious Vita Offse. 




414 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap, viii. lations with the English kingdom, and the care with 

The which at this time he informed Offa of the progress 

Kingdoms, of Christianity among the old Saxons proves that 

690^829 ^ e l°°ked upon him as a useful ally. 

„ — But friendly as was the general tenor of the king's 

Relations J . & ,° 

of Charles policy, Offa shrank cautiously from any connection 
land, which might imply a recognition of Frankish su- 
premacy. When Charles, in 788, demanded the 
hand of one of the Mercian king's daughters for his 
son Charles, Offa demanded in return the hand of a 
daughter of Charles for his son Ecgberht ; and so 
stung was Charles by this claim of equality that he 
closed for a while his ports against English traffic 
till the mediation of Alcuin reconciled the two sov- 
ereigns. 1 But Offa had good grounds for his cau- 
tion. The costly gifts which Charles despatched 
from time to time to the monasteries of England as 
of Ireland showed his will to obtain aa influence 
in both countries : through Alcuin he maintained 
relations with Northumbria; through Archbishop 
yEthelheard he maintained relations not only with 
Kent, but with the whole English Church. Above 
all, he harbored at his court exiles from every Eng- 
lish realm. Exiled kings of Northumbria made 
their way to Aachen or Nimeguen ; East-Anglian 
thegns sought a refuge there after the conquest of 
their realm ; 2 and at the close of Offa's life, in 796, 
Charles was still sheltering a priest, Odberht, who 
had left England on pretext of pilgrimage ; but, as 

1 See an examination of this story in Lappenberg, Anglo-Saxons, 
i. 293. 

2 Charles to Archbishop ^Ethelheard (Stubbs and Haddan, Coun- 
cils, vol. iii. p. 487, with note). 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



415 



the Mercian king believed, to make false charges CHAP - VI "- 
against him as well as other exiles "who through The 
fear of death have fled to our protection." * There, Kingdoms, 
too, Ecgberht, the claimant of the West -Saxon 69 ^29 
throne, had found a refuge since Offa's league with — 
Beorhtric in j8j. 

The years which Ecgberht spent at the court of Ecgberht 
Charles were years of the highest moment in the Frankish 
history of the world. Master of the whole German 
people across the Channel, the Frankish king threw 
the weight of his new power on the Sclavonic and 
Tartar nations which were pressing on its rear ; and 
that eastward movement of the Teutonic race, which 
was to found the two great German powers of the 
present day in the marches of Brandenburg and 
Austria, began in the campaigns of Charles against 
the Avars and the Wends. But Charles was now 
to be more than a German king. His greatness 
had reached a height which revived in men's minds 
the memory of Rome ; his repulse of the heathen 
world, which was pressing on from the east, marked 
him out for the head and champion of Christendom; 
and on Christmas-day, 800, the shouts of the people 
and priesthood of! Rome hailed him as Roman Em- 
peror. Ecgberht had probably marched in the train 
of the Frankish king to the Danube and the Ti- 
ber ; he may have witnessed the great event which 
changed the face of the world ; and it was in the 
midst of the peace which followed it, while the new 
emperor was yet nursing hopes of a recognition in 
the East as in the W T est which would have united 

1 Charles to Offa (Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 497). 



416 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



690-829. 



chap. vin. the whole world again under a Roman rule, that the 
death of Beorhtric opened a way for the exile's re- 
turn to Wessex. 

The years that had passed since his flight had 
made little change in the state of Britain. In 794, 

Britain <P 

and the Offa had at last been enabled to complete his realm 
m *" e ' in Mid- Britain by the murder of the East-Anglian 
king, ^Ethelberht, and the seizure of his land; 1 but 
from that moment to his death, in 796, he was occu- 
pied in the founding of what was destined to be one 
of the greatest of English abbeys on a spot hallowed 
by the death of St. Alban, near the ruins of the Ro- 
man Verulamium, and in dealing with a fresh Kent- 
ish revolt. The revolt was only quelled by his suc- 
cessor, Cenwulf. 2 Cenwulf secured the co-operation 
of the Kentish primate in this work by a pledge 
to suppress the Mercian archbishopric ; and in 803 
Lichfield sank again into a suffragan see to the 
successors of Augustine. 3 But there was still no 
attempt to carry further the supremacy of Mercia. 
The history, indeed, of the Midland kingdom is at 
this point little more than a blank. All dreams of 
ambition at home must, in fact, have been hushed in 
the sense of a common danger, as men followed step 
by step the progress of the new ruler of Western 
Christendom. Charles had remained to the last on 
terms of peace and friendship with Offa; 4 but the 



1 E. Chron. a. 792 (4). 2 In 798. E. Chron. a. 796. 

3 For letters of Cenwulf and Leo III. on this matter see Stubbs 
and Haddan, Councils, pp. 521, 523. For final act of the council 
which did away with the archbishopric, ibid. p. 542. 

* Letter of Charles and Alcuin to Offa in 796. Stubbs and Had- 
dan, Councils, vol. iii. pp. 496, 498. 




Stanford's O'cograph{ Estab. 



4i8 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



chap. vin. death of the Mercian king, the war of Mercia with 
The Kent, and the murder of King ^Ethelred by the 
Kingdoms. Northumbrian thegns, afforded, in 796, an opening 
690^829. f° r intervention, which seems only to have been 
— averted by the persuasion of Alcuin. 1 The danger, 
though staved off for the time, must have deepened 
to English minds when, four years later, Charles 
mounted the Imperial throne. His coronation as 
Emperor had a meaning for the English states which 
we are apt to forget. Britain had been lost to the 
Empire in the hour when the rest of the Western 
provinces were lost ; and to men of that day it would 
seem natural enough that she should return to the 
Empire now that Rome had risen again to more 
than its old greatness in the West. Such a return, 
we can hardly doubt, was in the mind of Charles ; 
and the revolutions which were distracting the Eng- 
lish kingdoms told steadily towards it. When, in 
802, 2 Ecgberht left the court of Charles and mount- 
ed the West -Saxon throne, Cenwulf stood silently 
by ; and the peace which he maintained with the 
new ruler of Wessex throughout his reign suggests 
that this restoration had been brought about by dip- 
lomatic arrangement between the Emperor and the 
Mercian king. 3 Six years later a new step forward 



1 On the news of the murder " Carolus ... in tantum iratus est 
contra gentem illam, ut ait, perfidam et perversam, et homicidam 
dominorum suorum, pejorem earn paganis existimat ; ut, nisi ego 
intercessor essem pro ea, quicquid eis boni abstrahere potuisset et 
mali machinari, jam fecisset" (Alcuin to Offa, between April and 
July, 796). Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. p. 498. 

2 E. Chron. a. 800. 

3 It is possible that Cenwulf may have been hampered by a 
strife with Eardwulf of Northumbria about harboring of exiles, 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



419 



in the assertion of this supremacy was made by the chap, vm. 
new Empire. In 808, 1 the Northumbrian king, Eard- The 

. Three 

wulf, who had two years before been driven from Kingdoms, 
his throne by a revolt of his subjects, appealed both 69 o_7 3 9. 
to Pope and Emperor, and was brought back and re- 
stored to his throne by their envoys." 

But though we are thus told of the assertion of Conquest 

o < , of 

the Imperial supremacy in Northern Britain, of the Cornwall. 
relations between Charles and the exile who had 
quitted his protection to become king of the West 
Saxons we know nothing. The stay of Ecgberht 
at the Frankish Court had left, as his after -policy 
shows, a marked impression on him ; and we may be- 
lieve that the friendship which we find existing in 
later days between the West-Saxon House and that 
of Charles the Great had already begun. The first 
political enterprise of the new king, at any rate, was 
one which Charles himself might have suggested. 
The Bretons of Brittany were among the standing 
troubles of the Frankish realm, as the Britons of 
West Wales were the standing trouble of the West- 
Saxon. A blow at the one was, in great measure. 
a blow at the other ; and Lewis the Gentle, who in 
814 succeeded his father, Charles, in the Imperial 

which Simeon of Durham places in 801. Sim. Durh., Gest. Reg. a. 
801. 

1 Sim. Durh., Hist. Dun. Eccl. ii. 5 ; E. Chron. (Peterborough), a. 
806. 

2 Eginhard. Annal. a. 808 : " Rex Nordhanhambrorum de Britan- 
nia insula, nomine Eardulf, regno et patria pulsus, ad Imperatorem 
dum adhuc Noviomagi moraretur venit, et patefacto adventus sui 
negotio, Romam proficiscitur, Romaque rediens per legatos Romani 
Pontificis et domini Imperatoris in regnum suum reducitur." See 
Letters of Leo III. in Stubbs and Haddan, Councils, vol. iii. pp. 
562-565. 



420 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vni. throne, must have looked on with approval as strife 
The between the sprinkling of Englishmen who had re- 
Kingdoms, cently settled in Devon and the Welsh (who still 
69(M529. ne ld their ground across the Tamar) grew into a war 
which in 815 forced Ecgberht to march into the 
heart of Cornwall. 1 After eight years of fighting, 
his attack proved successful ; the last fragment of 
British dominion in the west came to an end, and 
the whole of Dyvnaint owned the supremacy of the 
West-Saxon king. The conquest of Cornwall marks 
a fresh stage in the long warfare between Britons 
and Englishmen. As a nation Britain had passed 
away with the victories of Deorham and Chester: 
what was left were four British peoples — the Britons 
of Cornwall, of Central Wales, of Cumbria, and of 
Strathclyde. In the two hundred years which had 
elapsed since ^Ethelfrith's victory, three of these had 
bowed to the English sway. Ecgfrith had put an 
end to the independence of Cumbria. Under Ead- 
berht, Northumbria had brought her strife with 
Strathclyde to a close by the subjection of these 
Northern Britons and the capture of Alcluyd. In 
Central Wales, Offa's conquest of the tract between 
the Severn and the Dyke had been followed by a 
payment of tribute on the part of the chieftains to 
the westward of it, which was a practical acknowl- 
edgment of their submission to the Mercian crown. 
Ecgberht's campaign brought the long struggle to 
an end by the reduction of the one British state 
which still remained unconquered ; and the Britons 
of the southwestern peninsula, after the successive 

1 E. Chron. a. 813, 823. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



421 



losses of Somerset and Devon, saw the West Saxons chap/vih 
masters of their last strongholds from the Tamar to 
the Land's End. 



The 

Three 

Kingdoms. 



But the winning of West Wales was the smallest 
result of Ecgberht's victories. The dread of Welsh 
hostility in their rear had formed till now the main of Merda 
check on any advance of the West Saxons against 



690-829. 

Conquest 




their English neighbors ; and not only was this check 
removed by the reduction of Cornwall, but it was 
removed at a moment when its internal condition 
allowed Wessex to take advantage of the liberty of 
action which it had gained, and when the civil dis- 
cord which had so long torn the kingdom in pieces 
was hushed beneath the firm rule of Ecgberht. While 



4 2 2 THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. vin. Wessex, too, regained the strength it had lost through 
The the past two centuries, its rival in Central Britain 
Kingdoms, sank helplessly into the- anarchy from which the 
690^829 sou thern kingdom had emerged. On Cenwulf's 
— death, 1 in 821, Mercia was torn with civil war; and 
the weakness this left behind it was seen when his 
successor took up the long-interrupted strife with 
the West Saxons. The war in Dyvnaint was hardly 
over when Beornwulf, in 825, marched into Wilt- 
shire. But the decisive repulse of his army at El- 
landun 2 was the signal for a break-up of the Mercian 
realm. All England south of the Thames submit- 
ted to the West-Saxon king ; 3 the East Saxons over 
the river owned the rule of Wessex ; and in Kent 
Ecgberht was able to set aside a native king who 
had seized its throne in the hour of Mercia's defeat. 
Others were doing his work in Mid -Britain itself. 
The overthrow of Ellandun was followed by a des- 
perate rising against Beornwulf's sway along the 
eastern coast, Mercia, spent by its earlier over- 
throw, was utterly exhausted by two victories of the 
East Anglians : two of its kings in succession fell 
fighting on East-Anglian soil; 4 and a third, Wiglaf, 
had hardly mounted the throne when Ecgberht saw 
that the hour had come for a decisive onset. In 
828, the West-Saxon army crossed the Thames; 
Wiglaf fled helplessly before it; and the realm of 
Penda and of Offa bowed without a struggle to its 
conqueror. 

But Ecgberht had wider dreams of conquest than 



1 E. Chron. a. 819. 9 E. Chron. a. 823. 

3 E. Chron. a. 823. * E. Chron. a. 823, 825. 



THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 



423 



those of supremacy over Mercia alone; and, setting chap, vm. 
an under-king on its throne, he marched in the fol- The 
lowing year to the attack of Northumbria. In the King Joms. 
silence of her annals, we know not why the realm 6 g<^ 2 9. 
which seventy years before had beaten back /Ethel- „ t ~7 . 

■> J m Submission 

bald, and which had since carried its conquests to of North- 
the Clyde, now yielded without a blow to Ecgberht's 
summons. The weariness of half a century of an- 
archy had, no doubt, done much to break the spirit 
of northern independence, while terror of the pirates 
who were harrying the Northumbrian coast may 
have strengthened the dim longing for internal uni- 
ty which was growing up under the influence of the 
Church. But, whatever may have been the causes 
of their action, the Northumbrian thegns met Ecg- 
berht on their border, at Dore, in Derbyshire, and 
owned him as their overlord. 1 There is something 
startling in so quiet and uneventful a close to the 
struggles of two hundred years ; for with the sub- 
mission of Northumbria the work that Oswiu and 
/Ethelbald had failed to do was done. In a revolu- 
tion which seemed sudden, but which was in reality 
the inevitable close of the growth of natural con- 
sciousness through these centuries of English his- 
tory, the old severance of people from people had at 
last been broken down ; and the whole English race 
in Britain was for the first time knit together under 
'a single ruler. Though the legend which made 
Ecgberht take the title of King of England is an 
invention of later times, it expressed an historic 
truth. Long and bitter as the struggle for separate 

1 E. Chron. a. 827. 



a 2 a THE MAKING OF ENGLAND. 

chap. viir. existence was still to be in Mid -Britain and the 

The North, it was a struggle that never wholly undid the 

Kingdoms. work which his sword had done; and from the mo- 

690^829 men t when the Northumbrian thegns bowed to their 

— West-Saxon overlord, England was made in fact, if 

not as yet in name. 



INDEX. 



Abingdon, 343, and note. 

Aedhan, son of Gafran, born A.D. 
533, 225 ; consecration of, as king 
of Dalriada, A.D. 574, by Colomba, 
225 ; drives back the Bernicians, 
225. 

yEdilwalch, 366. 

/Elfred, his birthplace, 92 ; and Eald- 
helm, 326. 

.•Ella, the Engle of Deira under, 208; 
death, a.d. 588, 211. 

^Ue, son of Hengest, 35. 

^Ethelbald, succeeds Ceolred, A.D. 
718, 384; defeated by the West 
Saxons, A.D. 754, 384 ; attacks Ead- 
berht, 392 ; death, a.d. 757, 405. 

^thelberht, birth, A.D. 552, 107, note ; 
Kent under, 107 ; defeat of, at Wib- 
ba's dun, or Wimbledon, A.D. 568, 
113 ; marriage with Bertha, daugh- 
ter of Charibert, 204 ; Kent under, 
206 ; as overlord of the East Sax- 
ons, 207 ; extent of his supremacy, 
207; and Augustine, 213; conver- 
sion to Christianity, 215 ; advance 
of Christianity under, 227 ; builds 
the church of St. Paul, 228 ; decline 
of power, and death, a.d. 616, 238. 

^Ethelburh, daughter of Eadbald, mar- 
ried to Eadwine, 251 ; at the death 
of Eadwine takes refuge in Kent, 
264, 344. 

^Ethelfrith, effect of his victories on 
the Britons, 192 ; king of Northum- 
bria, A.D. 593, 212 ; victory over the 
Scots at Daegsastan, 225 ; difficulties 
with the descendants of .^Ella, 232 ; 
bribes Raedwald for the death of 
Eadwine, 241 ; defeat of, by Raed- 
wald, at the river Idle, 244. 

yEthelhere, 292 ; death at the battle 
of the Winwasd, 294. 

^Ethelred, succeeds Wulfhere, a.d. 
675, 334; retires to a monastery, 
376. 



^Ethelric, conquers Deira, 211 ; union 
of Deira and Bernicia as Northum- 
bria under, 21 1 ; death, a.d. 593, 212. 

^Ethelthryth, Abbess, her tomb at Ely 
built from the ruins of Camboritum, 
79, 341, and note. 

^Ethelwalch, baptized, and receives 
the settlements of the Isle of Wight 
and Meonwara at the hands of 
Wulfhere, 319. 

Agatho, chaplain to Bishop Agilberct, 

3I3- 

Agilberct, Bishop, 312. 

Agricola, his intended conquest of 
Ireland, 269. 

Aidan, Bishop, death of, 289. 

Alchfrid, son of Oswiu, 311. 

Alcuin, a pupil of Ecgberht, 396 ; at 
the Frankish Court, 396. 

Aldborough, Roman traces at, 62. 

Aldfrith, king of Northumbria, 385 ; 
rise of literature under, 386. 

Ammianus Marcellinus, 15, note. 

Ancaster, Roman remains at, 77. 

Anderida (Pevensey), a fortress, 21 ; 
siege of, 41 ; its fall, 42. 

Andredsweald, the, retreat of the Brit- 
ons to, 40. 

Anna, brother of Sigeberht, under-king 
of East Anglia, 265 ; death, a.d. 654, 
292. 

Antonines, the, government under, 2, 
and note ; 4, note. 

Arden, the forest of, 73, 337, 338, note. 

Augustine, lands in Britain, a.d. 597, 
212; meets ^Ethelberht, 213; con- 
version of JEthelberht and men of 
Kent, 215, 216; meets the Welsh 
clergy, 217, 218 ; failure of the con- 
ference with the Welsh, 221. 

Aurelius Ambrosianus, victory of, 
over Vortigern, 36 ; marches on 
the Jutes, 36. 

Aylesford, battle of, and death of 
Horsa at, 34, 35 ; the victory a 
cause of political change, 35. 



426 



INDEX. 



B 

Baeda, absence of British and Roman 
names in his history, 135 ; birth and 
early life, 386 ; his work, 388 ; the 
story of his death, 390. Notes and 
references to, thronghoitt. 

Bamborough, Ida's headquarters, 69. 

Bampton, battle of, 231. 

Barbury Hill, battle of, 91. 

Barking, iEthelburh and the nuns of, 

344- 
Bath, early grandeur of, 123 ; Roman 

remains, 123, note ; 378. 
Battles — 

Aylesford.A.D. 455, 34,35. 

Bampton, A.D. 614, 231. 

Barbury Hill, A.D. 556, 91. 

Bedford, a.d. 571, 119. 

Bensington, a.d. 779, 406. 

Bradford, at, A.D. 652, 329. 

Burford, A.D. 754, 384. 

Charford, A.D. 579, 85. 

Chester, a.d. 613, 234, 235. 

Cirencester, a.d. 628, 259. 

Crayford, A.D. 457, 36. 

Dsegsastan, A.D. 603, 225. 

Deorham, a.d. 577, 124. 

Ellandun, a.d. 825, 422. 

Faddiley, a.d. 584, 199, 200. 

Hatfield, a.d. 633, 263. 

Heaven-field, a.d. 635, 26S. 

Idle, the, a.d. 617, 243, 244. 

Maserfield, A.D. 642, 286. 

Mearcredsburn, a.d. 485, 41, note. 

Mount Badon, at, a.d. 520, 86. 

Nectansmere, a.d. 685, 368. 

Otford, a.d. 775, 406. 

Wanborough, a.d. 591, 201. 

Wanborough, a.d. 715, 381. 

Wibba's dun, or Wimbledon, a.d. 
568, 113. 

Winwaed, the, a.d. 655, 292. 

Wipped's-fleet, a.d. 439, 37. 
Bedford, battle of, 119.' 
Benedict, 311 ; his church at Wear- 
mouth, 362. 
Bensington, Offa defeats the West 

Saxons at, 406. 
Beorhtric, succeeds Cynewulf as king 

of the West Saxons, 409; marries 

Eadburh, daughter of Offa, 409. 
Beornwulf of Mercia attacks Ecgberht 

and is defeated, 422. 
"Beowulf," 155, note; the song of, 

157- 
Berkshire (" Bearrocshire "), probable 

origin of the name, 93. 



Bernicians, their settlement, 70 ; su- 
preme in the North under Oswald, 
268. 

Bignor, villa at, showing traces of Ro- 
man life, 43. 

Birinus converts King Cynegils and 
Wessex to Christianity, 284, 344. 

Bisi, Bishop of East Anglia, 322. 

Boadicea, massacre of merchants dur- 
ing the rising under, 100. 

Boniface, his mission supported by the 
Frankish king, 401, and note. 

Bosa, as Bishop of the Deirans, 364. 

Botulf, founder of Botulf's town, or 
Boston, 341. 

Bradford, battle at, 329. 

Brancaster, a fortress against the Sax- 
ons, 20 ; ruins of, 49. 

Britain, and the Roman conquest, 1, 
and note ; organization of, under the 
Antonines, 2 ; mines as a founda- 
tion of prosperity, 3 ; imperfect civ- 
ilization, 5 ; Christianity in, 6 ; as a 
military depot of the Roman em- 
pire, 7; physical state of, 7; culti- 
vation of, under the Romans, 10 ; 
extent of fens and forests, 11 ; the 
several settlements of the conquer- 
ors, 149. 

Britain, Mid-, absence of record of 
conquest, 71, 72. 

Britons, quarrel with the Jutes, 32 ; 
Hengest attacks the, a.d. 455, 32; 
defeated by Jutes at Wipped's-fleet, 
37 ; retreat of, to the Andredsweald, 
40 ; defeat of, at Southampton Wa- 
ter, by the West Saxons, a.d. 508, 
84 ; evidence of, in language, ruins, 
and religion, 134-140 ; their influ- 
ence on the Engles, 140 ; under Ine, 
193 ; their resistance aided by nat- 
ural defence of the forests, 219 ; 
causes of disorganization, 219. 

Brocmael, his victory over Ceawlin at 
Faddiley, 200 ; defeat at Chester by 
^Ethelfrith, 235. 

Burford, battle of, 384. 

Burgh Castle, as a fortress, 20. 



Cadwallon, joins Penda in his at- 
tack on Eadwine, 261 ; defeat and 
death at the battle of Heaven-field, 
268. 

Csedmon, 357 ; the story of his Sonc, 
358. 

Caerleon as a Roman station, 4, 7. 



INDEX. 



427 



Caint (Kent), 9 ; the home of the Jutes, 
38. 

Calleva Atrebatum (Silchester), capt- 
ure of, by the West Saxons, 112. 

Camboritum (now Cambridge ), en- 
tire destruction of, by the Gyrwas, 

79- 

Campodunum, 249, and note. 

Camulodunum, the oldest Roman set- 
tlement, 45. 

Canterbury ( Durovernum ), 3 ; as a 
fortress, 21, 32 ; the home of vEth- 
elberht, 205, 206 ; Augustine enters, 
a.d. 597, 213. 

Cant-wara-byryg ; see Canterbury. 

Castrum-Legionum ; see Chester. 

Ceadda, 304 ; Bishop of Mercia, 322. 

Ceadwalla, king of the West Saxons, 
a.d. 685, 374; failure of his attack 
on Kent, 374. 

Cearl, king of the Mercians, 241. 

Ceawlin, his victory at Deorham over 
the Three Towns, 124; effect of his 
conquests on tribal relations, 195 ; 
in the Severn valley, 198 ; destruc- 
tion of Uriconium, 198 ; Penge- 
wyrn burned, 200 ; defeat at Faddi- 
ley, 200 ; defeated at Wanborough 
by Ceol, a.d. 591, 201. 

Cedd, his mission among the Middle 
English, 291. 

Cenwealh, king of Wessex, 287 ; de- 
feated by Wulfhere, a.d. 661, 318; 
and Bishop Wini, 322 ; success at 
Bradford and at Pens, 329. 

Ceol or Ceolric, as king of the Hwic- 
cas, 201 ; his defeat of Ceawlin at 
Wanborough, 201. 

Ceolred, king of Mercia, attacks Lie 
at Wanborough, 381 ; death, a.d. 
718,382. 

Ceolwulf, A.D. 597, 202 ; struggles with 
the South Saxons, a.d. 607, 231 ; 
death, a.d. 611, 238, 392. 

Ceorl, the, or freeman, 173. 

Cerdic, at the mouth of the Itchen, 
and his attack on Porchester, 84 ; 
conquest of the Isle of Wight, 87. 

Charford, battle of, 85. 

Charles the Great, his relations with 
England, 41 1 ; Ecgberht at the court 
of, 414. 

Chester, as a Roman station, 4, 7; 
capture of, by yEthelfrith, 235. 

Christianity, the triumph of, 301. 

Cirencester, as a Roman station, 4; 
battle of, 259, 260. 

Cissa, son of ^Elle, 40. 



Claudius, his part in the conquest of 
Britain, 1. 

Coenred succeeds ^Ethelred as king 
of the Mercians, 376. 

Colchester, a Roman site, 4; its im- 
portance as a military station, 7 ; as 
a fortress, 20. 

Coldingham,Ebba's monastery at, 351. 

Colman, Bishop, Finan's successor, 
312. 

Colum, or Columba, lands in the Isle 
of Hii, a.d. 563, 224 ; founds a re- 
ligious centre, 224 ; legend of, 225 ; 
his mission-station at Hii, 281. 

Condidan, or Kyndylan, 124. 

Comnael, one of the kings of the Three 
Towns, 124. 

Constantine, 6 ; crosses to Gaul, A.D. 
407, 23 ; expulsion of his officers 
from Britain, 23 ; born at York, 60; 
as ruler in the southwest, 223. 

Corinium (Cirencester), its position 
among the important towns, 123. 

Cray ford, battle of, and victory of 
Hengest, 36. 

Crida, first king of the Mercians, 258. 

Crowland, the abbey of, 343. 

Cunetio, capture of, by Cynric, 91. 

Cutha, slain at Faddiley, 201. 

Cuthbert, 289 ; early life, 304 ; joins 
the monks of Lindisfarne, 305 ; 
traits of character, 307, 308; at 
Carlisle, 367. 

Cuthwulf, his victory at Bedford, 119, 
120. 

Cwichelm, through Eumer, attempts 
the assassination of Eadwine, 251. 

Cymen, son of JEUe, 40. 

Cymen's Ora, or Keynor, the landing- 
place of the Saxons, 40. 

Cynegils, succeeds Ceowulf, A.D. 611, 
231 ; defeats the Welsh at Bamp- 
ton, a.d. 614, 231. 

Cynewulf, 361 ; death, A.D. 821, 421. 

Cynric, with Cerdic, attacks Porches- 
ter in 501, 84; as king of the West 
Saxons, 88 ; his advance westward, 
a.d. 552, 88 ; capture of Sorbiodu- 
num, 89 ; his advance after the fall 
of Sorbiodunum, 90 ; capture of Cu- 
netio, 91. 

D 

Dasgsastan, battle of, and defeat of the 

Scots under Aedhan, 225. 
Dalriada, kingdom of, founded by the 

Scots, 224. 
Deirans, a title of the Engle dwellers 



428 



INDEX. 



by the Denvent, 58 ; the East Rid- 
ing of Yorkshire probably repre- 
sents the extent of their first settle- 
ment, 58 ; capture of Eboracum by, 
60. 

Deorham, battle of, 124. 

" Deor's Complaint," 156, note. 

Deusdedit, Archbishop, death, a.d. 
664, 316. 

Deva ; see Chester. 

Devil's Dyke, the, as a work of de- 
fence, 51. 

Diana, temple to, tradition of, on the 
site of the church of St. Paul, 102. 

Durobrivae, the centre of a pottery- 
district, 77, 78, note ; conquest of, 
by the North Gyrwas, 78. 

Durolipons, near the present Hunt- 
ingdon, the scene of the Gyrwas' 
conquests, 79. 

Durovernum ( Canterbury ), 3 ; de- 
stroyed by Hengest, 33 ; its mili- 
tary importance, 52. 



Eadbald, son of .-Ethel berht, turns 
from Christianity, and again ac- 
cepts it, 239. 

Eadberht, son of Eata, king of North- 
umbria, a.d. 738, 393 ; attacked by 
^Ethelbald, 393 ; successful attack 
on the Picts, a.d. 740, 393 ; defeat 
of by the Picts, 396. 

Eadfrid, second son of Eadwine, mur- 
dered by Penda, 283. 

Eadhed as bishop of the Lindiswara, 

364- 

Eadwine, son of JElla, 240 ; sheltered 
by Cearl, king of the Mercians, 241 ; 
marries Qusenburg, daughter of Ce- 
arl, 241 ; at the court of Raedwald, 
241 ; ^Ethelfrith plots for his death, 
241 ; king of Northumbria, 246 ; 
conquest of Elmet, 249 ; extent of 
his kingdom, 250 ; marries .-Ethel- 
burh, daughter of Eadbald, 251 ; at- 
tempted assassination of, 251 ; vic- 
tory of the West Saxons, 251 ; over- 
lord of all English kingdoms, save 
Kent, 252 ; York his capital, 254 ; 
accepts Christianity, 256 ; places 
Sigeberht over the East Anglians, 
261 ; defeat and death at the battle 
of Hatfield, 263. 

" Eadwine's burh" (Edinburgh), a 
northern border post, 246. - 

Ealdhelm, kinship, 326 ; his work, 330. 



Eanfled, sends Wilfrid to Rome, 311. 

Eanfrith, son of .Ethelfrith, king of 
the Bernicians, 264 ; murder of, 
265, 266. 

Earconberht, king of Kent, 311. 

Eardwulf, restored to the Northum- 
brian throne, a.d. 808, 419. 

East Anglians, defeat of, by Penda, 
265. 

East Goths in Italy, 22. 

East Saxons, see Saxons. 

Eata, as bishop of the Bernicians, 364. 

Ebba, establishes a monastery at Col- 
dingham, 351 ; her descent, 352. 

Ebbsfleet, landing of the Jutes at, a.d. 
449, 27, and note ; landing of Au- 
gustine at, 214. 

Eboracum (York), a Roman camp and 
capital of Britain, 59 ; under Caesar 
Constantius an imperial city, 60 ; 
the birthplace of Constantine, 60 ; 
its grandeur and strength, 60 ; de- 
struction of, 61. 

Ecgberht, descendant of Ceawlin, de- 
feat of by Beorhtric, 409 ; at the 
court of Charles the Great, 415 ; 
king of the West Saxons, a.d. 802, 
418; conquest of Cornwall, 420 ; 
victory over Beornwulf at Ellandun, 
422 ; conquest of Mercia and North- 
umbria, 422, 423 ; as king of Eng- 
land, 423. 

Ecgberht, son of Eata, Archbishop of 
York, A.D. 735, 392 ; his library, 

395- 

Ecgfrith, king of Northumbria, A.D. 
670, 347; victories over the Brit- 
ons, 347 ; defeats the Scots and 
Picts, 349 : his defeat of Wulfhere, 
350 ; troubles with the Picts, 367 ; 
defeat and death at Nectansmere, 
368. 

Ecgwine, Bishop, and his preaching, 
340; legend of, 340, 341. 

Eddi, and prose literature of the 
North, 326. 

Ellandun, victory of Ecgberht and de- 
feat of Beornwulf at, 422. 

Elmet, kingdom of, probable extent, 
246 ; conquest of by Eadwine, 249. 

Ely, 341, and note. 

Engle, the, or Englishmen, their home- 
land, 48 ; absence of chronicle re- 
lating to, 48 ; probably assisted in 
the work of conquest by the Sax- 
ons, 50 ; their northward advance, 
53; the conquest of Lindsey, 54; 
advance towards the Trent, 56 ; an- 



INDEX. 



429 



other tribe lands at the mouth of 
the Humber, 56 ; in vale of the 
Derwent as "Deirans," 58; their 
god-temple at Goodmanham, 58 ; 
settlement in " Cliffland," or Cleve- 
land, 63 ; in Mid-Britain, 71, 72 ; 
their settlement at Northampton, 
79; importance of the western ad- 
vance, 81 ; social life after the con- 
quest, 148 ; military and civil or- 
ganization, 167-171. 

"English Chronicle," the, as the au- 
thority of the English conquest, 27, 
note ; Henry of Huntingdon's addi- 
tions to, 40, note. 

English Literature, the Canterbury 
school under Theodore and Hadri- 
an, 324 ; /Eddi and Northern prose, 
326 ; Ealdhelm, 326 ; Caedmon, 356 ; 
growth under Aldfrith, 386 ; Baeda, 
386 ; the library of Ecgberht, 394. 

Eorl, the, or ^Etheling, 173. 

Eorpwald, son of Raedwald, succeeds 
his father, 250; conversion of, 257 ; 
death, 257. 

Eosterwini, 355. 

Erconwald, his religious foundations 
at Chertsey and Barking, 344. 

Ermine Street, of later than Roman 
date, 47 ; course of, 55. 

Eumer, a West-Saxon envoy, attempts 
the life of Eadwine, 250. 

Evesham, legend of, 341, and note. 



Faddiley, battle of, and defeat of Ce- 

awlin, 199. 
Farinmael, one of the kings of the 

Three Towns, 124. 
Fenlands, extent of, 10, II. 
Finan, Bishop, Aidan's successor, 290, 

3"- 

Forests, extent of, 11 ; as natural de- 
fences, 219. 
Fortresses of the " Saxon Shore," 20, 

21 ; garrison and power of the 
troops, 21. 

"Four Towns," the, Cuthwulf's vic- 
tory over, 119. 
Franks, the, their colonization of Gaul, 

22 : extent of their conquests, 399 ; 
friendly relations with the English, 

399- 
Frideswide, St., legend of, 343. 
Frisian Sea, the early name of Firth 

of Forth, 68. 
Frisians, 40, and note ; settlers in the 

Tweed valley, 68. 



Garianonum, ruins of, 49. 

Gaul, conquered by the Franks, 22. 

Geraint, King, victory of Ine over, 
376. 

Gewissas, the, a tribe of West Saxons, 
84 ; advance on Winchester, 84, 85 ; 
defeat at Mount Badon, or Badbury, 
86; their route from Sorbiodunum, 
89 ; their settlements and local ti- 
tles, 89 ; and the " White Horse," 92. 

Gildas, 24, 25, note. 

Glastonbury, and its legend, 379. 

Glevum (Gloucester), advantages of 
its position, 123. 

Gregory, and English slaves, 210; his 
mission under Augustine, 212, 213 ; 
plan of ecclesiastical organization, 
216; death, a.d. 606, 229. 

Guest's, Dr., " Early English settle- 
ment in South Britain," 31, 32, note ; 
35, note. 

Guthlac, at Crowland, 342 ; his life, 
342 ; building of Crowland Abbey, 

343- 
" Gwent," a clearing, 9. 
Gwenta of the Iceni, now Norwich, 9, 

49. 
"Gwentceaster" (Winchester), 9. 
Gwynedd, King of, protects the sons 

of iElla, 232. 
Gyrwas, the, or Fen - folk, 77 ; in 

Northamptonshire, 79. 
Gyrwas, the South, as conquerors of 

Durolipons, 79. 
Gyrwas, the North, as conquerors of 

Durobrivae, 79. 

H 

Hadrian, 2, note ; 5, note ; his defence 
against the Picts, 14 ; rejects the 
see of Canterbury, 316; and Theo- 
dore, 324. 

Hampton, the " home-town," after- 
wards Northampton, settlement of 
the Engles at, 80. 

Hatfield, battle of, 263. 

Heaven-field, battle of, 268. 

Hengest, the landing of, the beginning 
of English history, 27 ; burns Duro- 
vernum, 32 ; march of, 32 ; his first 
attack on the Britons, a.d. 455, 52. 

Hereric, son of ^lla, poisoned, a.d. 
615, 240. 

Hertford, Council of, under Theodore, 
323 ; after-influence, 324. 

Hild, abbess, 313, 356; her descent, 
357- 



43Q 



INDEX. 



Hodgkins, " Italy and her Invaders," 

1 8, note. 
Honorius, the emperor, success of 

Stilicho under, 22. 
Horsa, death of, at the battle of Ayles- 

ford, 35. 
Hoisted, the probable grave of Horsa, 

35- 

Hrofes-ceaster (Rochester), 147. 

Hiibner's " Inscriptiones Britanniae 
Latinae," 5. 

Huntingdon, Henry of, his additions 
to the " English Chronicle," 40, note. 

Hwiccas, settlement of, in Gloucester- 
shire and Worcestershire, 125 ; ris- 
ing of, under Ceol, 200, 201. 



Icknield Way, course of the, 117. 

Ida, " the Flame-bearer," 69 ; Bam- 
borough his base of operations, 69 ; 
his struggles against the Welsh, 70. 

Idle, battle of the, 243, 244. 

Lie, the Britons under, 193; submis- 
sion of Kent and London to, 375 ; 
his defeat of Geraint, 376, 377 ; vic- 
tory over Ceolred, A.D. 715, 3S1 ; 
pilgrimage and death, 382. 

Ireland, its physical character, 269 ; 
early institutions, 271, 272 ; story 
of St. Patrick, 274 ; conversion of, 
275 ; the Church, and social condi- 
tion of, 276. 

Isurium, 62, and note. 



James, a Roman priest of Deira, 310. 

Justus, bishop of Rochester, a.d. 604, 
227 ; leaves Britain, 240. 

Jutes, the, date of their landing, 26, 
note : land at Ebbsfieet under Hen- 
gest and Horsa, a.d. 449, 27 ; their 
settlement in Thanet, 31 ; firs-t dis- 
putes with the Britons, 32 ; their 
march, 32, 33 ; their victory at Ayles- 
ford, 34; victory at Crayford, 36; 
at Wippeds-fieet, 37 ; the termina- 
tion of their conquests with the Isle 
of Wight, 87 ; their advance on 
London, 103 ; their advance west- 
ward, A.D. 568, 109 ; their defeat 
under ^Ethelberht at Wibba's dun, 
113; effect of their conquest on 
. Kent, 146 ; Kent and the Isle of 
Wight their provinces, 149. 

K 

Kent (Caint), 9 ; 'its political power 



and prosperity under ^Ethelberht, 

107 ; importance under ^Ethelberht, 

206 ; decline of its political power, 

240. 
King, the Saxon, a representative of 

national life, 172. 
King's Scaur, cave in, and traces of its 

inhabitants, 64. 
Kingston, existence of Roman station 

at, 113, note. 
Kit's Coty-House, a cromlech, 34. 
Kyndylan, elegy on, 198, note. 



Leicester as a municipal centre, 4. 

Leutherius, 322. 

Lewis the Gentle, successor of Charles 
the Great, 419. 

Lichfield ("the field of the dead"), 
a traditional mark of Engle con- 
quest, 81 ; bishopric of, created by 
Offa, 409. 

Lilla, a thegn, saves the life of Ead- 
wine, 251. 

Lindiswara, the settlement of, 56 ; 
their southern movement, 73. 

Lindum, a Roman station, 4. 

Literature; see English Literature. 

Literature, Saxon, 156; " Deor's Com- 
plaint," 156, note; "Song of Beo- 
wulf," 157. 

Liudhard, Bishop, 213. 

Loidis (Leeds), site of, 247. 

London, its early position among 
towns, 7 ; as a fortress, 21 ; its mil- 
itary importance lost in commercial 
greatness, 95 ; early physical char- 
acter of its neighborhood, 95-99 ; 
growth of, under the Romans, 99 ; 
its advantages as a centre, 100 ; its 
probable extent under the Romans, 
101 ; the Roman embankments, and 
growth, 101, 102 ; its importance 
among towns, 103 ; the attack of 
East Saxons and Jutes on, 104 ; the 
fall of, 105, 106, and note. 

Lubbock's "Prehistoric Times," 16, 
note. 

Lymne, as a fortress, 21 ; fall of, 38. 

M 

Maelgwn, prince of North Wales, 223. 
Maidulf and Ealdhelm, 326. 
Maps, list of, xxi. 
Martel, Charles, 401, and note. 
Maryport, traces of Pictish raids at, 67. 
Maserfield, battle of, 286. 
Mearcredsburn, battle of, 41, note. 



INDEX. 



431 



Medeshamstead, foundation of the ab- 
bey of, 341. 

Mellitus, Bishop, mission to the East 
Saxons, 228 ; quits Britain, 239. 

Mercia, after the battle of the Win- 
waed, 294; under Wulfhere, 296; 
condition of in 669, 318. 

Mercians, the, or Men of the March, 
a title of the West Engles, 82 ; rise 
of, under Penda, 257 ; kings of, 258, 
note ; revolt in 659, 296. 

Merewald, brother of Wulfhere, un-, 
der-king of the valley of the "Wye, 

3i8- 
Monasteries and monastic life, under 

/Ethelred, 334; under Ecgfrith, 350. 
Mount Badon, battle at, 86. 
Mul, brother of Ceadwalla, death of, 

374- 375- 
Myned Agned, the site of Edinburgh, 

69. 

N 

Nectansmere, defeat of Ecgfrith at, 
368. 

Needwood forest, extent of, 72. 

Northamptonshire, physical character 
of, 81. 

Norwich, a Roman site, 4 ; the Gwen- 
ta of the Iceni, 9 ; a centre of settle- 
ment of the North-folk, 50. 

" Notitia Imperii," 20, note ; 21, note. 

O 

Offa, king of Mercia, A.D. 758, 405 ; 
his victory at Otford restores the 
Mercian realm, a.d. 775, 406 ; at- 
tack on the West Saxons, a.d. 779, 
406 ; defeats the king of Povvys, 407 ; 
creates the Archbishopric of Lich- 
field, 409; and Charles the Great, 
411; seizes East Anglia, 415, 416. 

Oidilwald, son of Oswald, an under- 
lying of part of Deira, 292 ; at the 
battle of the Winwaed, 292. 

Osric succeeds Eadwine as king of 
Deira, 264, 265 ; return of heathen- 
ism under, 264 ; death, 265. 

Osulf succeeds Eadberht, 396. 

Oswald, second son of iEthelfrith, suc- 
ceeds Eanfrith, 266 ; his victory over 
Cadwallon, 266; defeat and death 
at Maserfeld, 286. 

Oswini, son of Osric, 287 ; king of 
Deira, 288 ; death, 289. 

Oswiu, third son of ^Ethelfrith, king 
of Bernicia, 287 ; marries Eanfled, 
288 ; his defeat of Penda at the bat- 
tle of the Winwaed, 293 ; overlord 



of East Anglia, 294; over all the 
English, 295 ; religious difficulties, 
309 ; founds a religious house at 
Streonashalh, 313 ; at the synod of 
Whitby, a.d. 664, 313. 

Otford, victory of Offa at, 406. 

Othona, a fortress, 20. 

Ovvini, 355. 

P 

Paulinus, chaplain to yEthelburh, 
made Bishop of York, 255. 

Peada, son of Penda, under-king of 
the Middle English, 290; marries 
Alchfleda, daughter of Oswiu, 290 ; 
embraces Christianity, 290. 

Pec-saetan, the, their settlement in 
Derbyshire, 81. 

Penda, king of the Mercians, a.d. 626, 
258 ; attacks the West Saxons, a.d. 
628, 259 ; alliance with Cadwallon, 
262 ; victory over Eadwine, 264 ; 
victory over the East Anglians, 265 ; 
his overlordship, 265 ; victory over 
Oswald at Maserfield, 286 ; attack 
on Bamborough, 287 ; defeat at the 
battle of Winwaed, 293 ; death, 294. 

Pengwyrn, the site of Shrewsbury, 
199 ; burned by Ceawlin, 200. 

Picts, the, their struggle against the 
Emperor Hadrian, 14; assisted by 
disaffection in the Roman province, 
15 ; defeated by Theodosius, 15 ; de- 
feated by Stilicho, 22 ; 24, 25, note ; 
traces of their raids at Maryport, 
67 ; rising of, against Ecgfrid, 366 ; 
defeat Eadberht, 396. 

Pippin, King, sends envoys to North- 
umbria, 393 ; and the English mis- 
sion, 401. 

Pippin, the Short, king of the Franks, 
a.d. 751, 404. 

Porchester, a Roman fort, 21. 

Ptolemy, geographical survey of, 4, 
note. 

Putta, under -bishop, at Rochester, 
323- 

Q 

Quaenburg, wife of Eadwine, 241. 



Raedwald, king of the East Angli- 
ans, 207 ; accepts Christianity, 229 ; 
Mid -Britain under, 231 ; shelters 
Eadwine, 241 ; victory over ^Ethel- 
frith at the battle of the Idle, 250 ; 
death, a.d. 617, 250. 

Rata; (modern Leicester), its impor- 



432 



INDEX. 



tance in Mid-Britain, 76 ; Roman 
remains at, 76. 

Readings, the, their settlement, and 
preservation of name in the present 
town, 93. 

Reculver fort, 21. 

Regulbium (Reculver), 147. 

Richborough, port of, 3 ; as a fort, 21 ; 
its importance as a check against 
the Jutes, 36. 

Ricula, sister of ^Ethelberht, 207. 

Rochester as a fortress, 21. 

Rockingham forest, extent of, 73 ; 81, 
note. 

Roman Church, the thoroughness of 
its organization, 302 ; causes of sep- 
aration from the Irish Church, 308, 
309 ; England one under, 315. 

Roman inscriptions, absence of, in 
Devon, Cornwall, and Wales, 5. 

Roman villa at Bignor, 43 ; traces at 
Aldborough, 62 ; remains at Leices- 
ter, 76 ; remains at Ancaster, 77. 

Roman Wall, the, traces of military 
life in, 66. 

Romans, the government of towns un- 
der, 12; extent of their influence on 
the provincials, 13 ; evils of their 
government, 14; their difficulties 
with Saxon pirates, 20 ; their forts, 
21 ; strength, discipline, and with- 
drawal of troops, 21 ; marked influ- 
ence of, on the Engle, 142, 143 ; 
evils of rule, 147 ; traces of cult- 
ure, 1 ?4. 

S 

Saeberct, as under -king of the East 
Saxons, 227; death, a.d. 616, 238. 

" Saxon Shore," the, formation and 
extent, 19, 20 ; Count of, 19 ; 20, 
note; fortresses of, 20, 24, note ; 
complete conquest of, 52. 

Saxons, the, their homeland, 15 ; war- 
keels of, 16 ; description of, by Sido- 
nius Apollinaris, 16; off Gaul, a.d. 
287, 15, 16, note ; as slave-hunters, 
18 ; their cruelty and sacrifices, 18 ; 
attack Britain, a.d. 364, 18; effect 
of their piracy on commerce, 19 ; 
Roman precautions against, 19 ; de- 
feated by Stilicho, 22 ; landing of, 
in 447, 40; in the North-Thames 
district, 44 ; social life and arts, 155 ; 
literature, 156; religion and legends, 
159-161 ; as seamen and warriors, 
164-166; township, the, social life 
of, 175 ; defence of towns, 176; the 
common pasture - land, 176; dis- 



tinctive boundary names, 177; the 
freeman, his costume and home-life, 
179, 180; the position of women, 
and their work, 180; the common 
bond in peace and war, 182 ; the 
offences of the wrong -doer shared 
by his kin, 183; the "blood-wite," 
183 ; the freeman a freeholder, 184; 
the division of the plough-land, 184 ; 
the laet and his position, 185 ; the 
serf, his position due to crime or 
poverty, 186 ; their descendants 
born slaves, 186; the Tun-Moot, 
its laws and power, 187. 

Saxons, East, landing of, 44 ; barriers 
to their inland advance, 47 ; attack 
London, 103 ; Sledda, king of, 227 ; 
Saeberct, as under-king, 227 ; mis- 
sion of Bishop Mellitus to, 228. 

Saxons, Middle, as settlers west of 
London, 106. 

Saxons, West, victory over the Brit- 
ons, A.D. 508, 84 ; their after-inac- 
tion and its causes, 88; conquest 
of Berkshire, 93 ; advance on the 
district about Windsor, 94; their 
capture of Calleva Atrebatum, 1 12; 
their advance to the district of the 
Four Towns, 117; victory at Bed- 
ford under Cuthwulf, 119; victory 
of Deorham under Ceawlin, 124; 
leagued with the Welsh, 192 ; as 
conquerors of Somerset, 192 [see 
Gewissas). 

" Scots," the, troubles of the western 
coast from, 24 ; from north Ireland 
found the kingdom of Dalriada, 224 ; 
defeated by jEthelfrith at the battle 
of Daegsastan, 225. 

Servius, the emperor, and the Welsh, 

5- 

Sherwood forest, its extent, 72. 

Sidonius Apollinaris, his account of 
the Saxons and their piracy, 16, and 
note. 

Sigeberht, king of the East Anglians, 
a.d. 631, 261 ; death, a.d. 634, 266. 

Silchester ; see Calleva Atrebatum. 

Simon of Leicester, 341. 

Sledda, king of the East Saxons, 227. 

Snotingas, the, their place of settle- 
ment, now Nottingham, 75. 

Somerset, the West Saxons masters 
of, 193. 

Sorbiodunum (Old Sarum), fortress of, 
a check to the advance of the West 
Saxons, 87 ; capture of by Cynric, 



INDEX. 



433 



Southampton Water, its military and 
commercial importance, 83. 

Spain, conquest of, by West Goths, 
22. 

St. Albans, a Roman site, 4. 

St. Beino, legend of, 190, 191. 

St. Patrick, story of, 274. 

Stilicho, the Roman general, his suc- 
cesses over the Picts and Saxons, 
22. 

Stonehenge, called " Hanging Stones" 
by the Gewissas, a.d. 552, 89. 

Strathclyde, small states united as the 
kingdom of, 223. 

" Stycas," copper pieces coined in the 
reign of Eadberht, 392. 

Sudbury, a centre of the South-folk, 

T 

Thames Valley, character of, 95, 97. 

Thanet, settlement of Jutes in, 31. 

Thegns, the, as the king's body-guard, 
174; their bonds of allegiance, 177, 
178. 

Theodbald, brother of JEthelfrith, 
slain at the battle of Dsegsastan, 
226. 

Theodore, as Archbishop of Canter- 
bury, lands in Kent, a.d. 669, 317 ; 
his aims and success, 319, 320 ; the 
council at Hertford, 322 ; with Ha- 
drian, founds a school at Canter- 
bury, 324, 325 ; his division of dio- 
ceses, 331-334 ; his work in Mercia, 
346, 347 ; his division of the North- 
umbrian dioceses, 363 ; his death, 
a.d. 690, 369. 

Theodosius, his defeat of the Picts, 15. 

Towcester, position of the earlier 
town, 80. 

Trent valley, the, physical character 
of, 72 ; the Engle attack on, 73. 

Trumwine, Bishop, 385. 

Tun-Moot, the, the germ of modern 
government, 188. 

U 

Uriconium, distinction of, by Ceawlin, 
199 ; its importance and extent, 199. 

V 

Valentinian, inroads of Picts in the 

reign of, 15. 
Vandals, the, in Africa, 22. 
Venta (Winchester), as centre of a 

"Gwent," 4. 
Verulam, importance of, as a military 

station, 7. 

28 



Verulamium ( St. Albans ), its impor- 
tance, 105 ; martyrdom of Alban 
under Diocletian, 105 ; capture and 
destruction of, 105, and note. 

Vitalian, Pope, 388. 

Vortigern, defeat of, by Aurelius Am- 
brosianus, 36. 

W 

Wanborough, battle of, and defeat of 
Ceawlin, 201. 

Wantage, the birthplace of iElfred, 
92. 

Wantsum,, the channel separating 
Thanet from the mainland, 32, note. 

War-keels of the Saxons, 16. 

Watling Street, its course from Stony- 
Stratford, 80 ; towards the Severn, 
81. 

Wearingawick (Warwick), 340. 

West Goths, the, in Spain, 22. 

Weyland Smith's home, German le- 
gend of, 92. 

Whitby, the synod of, a.d. 664, 313; 
result of, 315; and the monastery 
ofHild,357. 

White Horse Vale, tradition connect- 
ed with, and the Gewissas, 92. 

Wibba's dun (Wimbledon), battle of, 

ii3- 

Wighard, sent to Rome for consecra- 
tion, 317; death, 317. 

Wightgara, the, Jute settlers in the 
Isle of Wight, 87. 

Wiglaf, king of East Anglia, defeated 
by Ecgberht, A.D. 828, 422. 

Wilfrid, visits Rome, 312; his re- 
turn, 312 ; appointed abbot by 
Alchfrid, 312; at the Whitby Syn- 
od, 313. 

Wilfrid, Bishop, and Ecgfrith, 363 ; 
is deposed, and appeals to Rome, 
364 ; his conversion of the South 
Saxons, 365 ; restored to York, 

3 68 - 
Willibrord, his mission among the 

Franks, 401. 
Wil-ssetan, the settlement of West 

Saxons at, 90. 
Winchester (Venta), 4 ; " Gwentceas- 

ter," 7. 
Winfrid, Bishop, removal from the 

diocese of Mercia, a.d. 675, 333. 
Winfrith ; see Boniface. 
Wini, Bishop, 322. 
Winwsed, battle of, 292. 
Wipped's-fleet, defeat of the Britons 

at, a.d. 465, 37. 



434 



INDEX. 



Witenagemote, the, 167. 

Wlencing, son of JEtte, 40. 

Woden, the god, traces of his name, 
163 ; decay of the worship of, 
301. 

Woodchester, Roman remains at, 124. 

Wulfhere, Mercia under, 296 ; de- 
feats Cenvvealh, 318; and ^Ethel- 
vvalch, 319; defeat of, and death, 
A.D. 675, 350. 



York, as capital of the Roman prov- 
ince, 7 ; capital of Britain under 
Eadwine, 254 ; Paulinus made bish- 
op of, 255 ; as a religious and po- 
litical centre, 394; the school of, 
under Ecgberht, 396 ; see also 
Eboracum. 

Z 

Zosimus, 23, note. 



HISTORY OF THE ENGLISH PEOPLE, 

By JOHN EICHAKD GREEN. 

Four Volumes. 8vo, Cloth, $2 50 per volume. 



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2 Green's History of the English People. 

The appearance of Mr. Green's fourth volume enables us to congratulate him 
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Green's History of the English People. 



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Green 's History of the English People. 



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gether the "Short History of the English People" might boast of having excited 
much more of public attention than is usually bestowed upon books of its kind. 
* * * The " History of the English People " no longer wears the modest guise of a 
school-book. It has become a book of stately appearance. Though the materials 
of the earlier book have been worked into it, and though we recognize many of 
the most brilliant passages as old friends, still the arrangement is so altered, and 
the amount of fresh matter is so large, that it is substantially a new work. His- 
tory in these days is one of the most progressive of sciences ; and Mr. Green 
deserves great credit for the readiness with which he has assimilated new infor- 
mation, for the frank and unhesitating manner in which he has withdrawn from 
untenable positions, and for t e pains he has taken to bring his work up to the 
newest lights. * * * The new book, while retaining the life and sparkle of ils pred- 
ecessor, is better proportioned, calmer in tone, and altogether a more ripe and 
complete piece of work. — Saturday Review, Loudon. 

England has a noble list of historians. No other nation can lay claim to such 
a galaxy of chroniclers as that which embraces glowing, rhetorical Macaulay j 
vivid, logical Hume ; terse, picturesque Smollett ; painstaking Hallam, partisan 
Cobbett, or poetic Howitt. Mr. Green has proven his claim to rank with Free- 
man and Fronde, among the better of the Victorian historians. He is a truer 
historian thau either, in the sense that he has no fight with creeds or persons of 
the past, and is never guilty of sacrificing sense to sound or form. He has suc- 
ceeded in accomplishing an herculean task — in traversing the beaten path of ac- 
cepted tradition and settled fact, and, with the same old materials, making a new 
work. * * * Mr. Greeu is instructive, and slill pleasing. His style is singularly 
clear and strong. Not a word is misplaced or wasted. His history has all the 
charm of a romance, and merits popularity as the most comprehensive and sym- 
pathetic record of the English people iu existence. — Observer, N. Y. 

Mr. Green's style is as clear as crystal, and he throws a charm over all that 
he touches. * * * The work will commend itself as a good one, perhaps the best, 
for families. And we are sure that those who begin to read it with any appreci- 
ation of history will gladly follow it through. — Watchman, Boston. 

Unique of its kind, admirable in execution, a story interestingly told. * * * 
This book has made a niche for itself which it fills moat admirably.— Christian at 
Work, N. Y. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, 
to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. 



STRAY STUDIES FROM ENGLAND AID ITALY, 

BY 

JOHN KICHABD GKEEN, M.A. 

Post 8vo, Cloth, $1 75. 



For condensation of valuable material, happy reauimation of old themes and 
suggestions of new, expressed in chaste and animated style, and thoroughly good 
English, these papers have not been excelled for many years. — Presbyterian, 
Philadelphia. 

The qualities which Mr. Green's history evinces— learning, poetic sympathy, 
common-sense, large ideas, a genial liking for mankind in general— appear in 
the new volume of " Stray Studies." Every chapter in this hook shows the thor- 
oughness of work and culture we should have expected. The range of thought, 
sympathy, and knowledge must be considerable of a man who discusses with 
equal zest and interest the manners of the poor of Loudon, the resemblance be- 
tween Virgil and Tennyson, the Florence of Dante, the foibles of British tourists, 
and the charms and glories of the British maiden. * * * These "Stray Studies" 
will be a source of real pleasure and profit to all who read them. The range 
of gifts and sympathies they show is indeed remarkable.— N. Y. Times. 

Lively, and eminently readable.— A thenceum, London. 

A delightful series of reveries by a scholar, an historian, and a master of pure 
and captivating prose. The author's " History of the English People " has proved 
one of the most popular works of the day; these essays will farther stamp his 
reputation with the seal of cultivated approval. He brings his poetical taste and 
ripened learning into full play while sunning himself in Cannes, St. Houorat, and 
San Eemo. He paints the Florence of Dante and the Venice of Tintoretto with 
the backward glance of poetical enthusiasm, and he is at home in Capri as in 
Oxford. Familiar with all their histories, and clothing himself for the time being 
with their romance, he is sufficient of an artist and a lover of the beautiful io 
revel in the changing tints of the sunny skies and the picturesque grace of silent 
ruins. Such essays as these form the most delightful reading possible.— Chicago 
Inter-Ocean. 

These studies all alike bear internal evidence of having been written with a 
leisurely delight, which expresses itself in calm thoughts wedded to a style of 
' chastened simplicity and elegance which all lovers of faultless composition must 
admire. — Christian at Work, N. T. 

An altogether pleasant book to read. * * * It is written in the pure, plain, vig- 
orous English of a writer who has the habit of writing earnestly, and earnestly 
endeavoring to choose his vyords solely for their aptness to express his thought. 
— N. Y. Evening Post. 

Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, 
to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. 



A SHOET HISTORY 



OF 



THE ENGLISH PEOPLE. 

By JOHN EICHAED GREEN", M.A. 

8vo, Cloth, $1 30. 



The object of the book, that of combining the history of the people with the 
history of the kingdom, is most successfully carried out. It gives, I think, in the 
main, a true and accurate picture of the general course of English history. It 
displays throughout a firm hold on the subject, and a singularly wide range of 
thought and sympathy. As a composition, too, the book is clear, forcible, and 
brilliant. It is the most truly original book of the kind that. I ever saw.— Extract 
from Letter of Edward A. Freeman, D.C.L.,'LL.D., &c, &c. 

Rightly taken, the history of England is one of the grandest human stories, 
and Mr. Green has so taken it that his book should delight the general reader 
quite as much as it delights the student. — Extract from Letter of Professor Henry 

MORT.ET. 

We know of no record of the whole drama of English history to be compared 
with it. We know of none that is so distinctly a work of genius. * * * It is a really 
wonderful production. There is a freshness and originality breathing from one 
end to the other— a charm of style, and a power, both narrative and descriptive, 
which lift it altogether out of the class of books to which at first sight it might 
seem to belong. The range, too, of subjects, and the capacity which the writer 
shows of dealing with so many different sides of English history, witness to pow- 
ers of no common order. And, with all this, Mr. Green shows throughout that he 
is on all points up to the last lights; that he has made himself thoroughly master 
both of original authorities and of their modern interpreters. — Pall Mall Gazette, 
London. 

Numberless are the histories of England, and yet until now it has been diffi- 
cult to select any one from the number as really and thoroughly satisfactory. 
This difficulty exists no longer. TVe will not go so far as to pronounce Mr. Green's 
book faultless, but we will say without hesitation that it is almost a model of 
what such a book should be — so far above any other brief and complete history 
of England that there is no room for comparison. The characters of leaders are 
remarkably well described, and their respective influence upon history fairly and 
appreciatively judged. And the author has shown rare tact and discrimination 
in the selection of his facts, so that the reader feels himself to be always stand- 
ing on the firm ground of ascertained and systematized knowledge, while, at the 
same time, every line is interesting reading — The Nation, N. T. 



Published by HARPER & BROTHERS, New York. 

Harper & Brothers will send the above work by mail, postage prepaid, 
to any part of the United States, on receipt of the price. 



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